Banding together for birds
The first saddlebacks have successfully begun breeding outside the safety of Zealandia, but can they survive?
A new programme of banding the North Island wattlebirds, also known as tieke, aims to find out if the estimated 30-40 saddlebacks living in the reserves surrounding Zealandia will reach a natural lifespan.
The birds can live up to 21 years on predator-free off-shore islands but conservationists want to see how they will fare in their new rough-and-tumble city neighbourhood.
Work has begun to catch and colour band the saddlebacks living in reserves outside Wellington with the help of specialist kokako ecologist Dave Bryden.
The birds are found across Polhill Reserve, Birdwood Reserve and Wrights Hill and are the only birds on the mainland breeding outside a fenced sanctuary.
‘‘The idea of the study is to work out how long the birds are lasting outside of these fenced areas,’’ Bryden said.
‘‘So this is an entirely novel situation but one we’ll increasingly see as tieke spill over from other fenced sanctuaries.’’
Saddlebacks were reintroduced to Zealandia in 2002, after being declared extinct on the mainland in 1910.
The first nest sighting outside the reserve was in Polhill in 2014.
Bryden has banded 24 saddlebacks so far, and hopes to complete his work in the next few weeks. He uses a pre-recorded playback of a saddleback’s birdsong to lure the territorial birds towards a sixmetre-long ground net.
The saddlebacks spent a lot of their time on the forest floor so the net, similar to a fishing net with inbuilt pockets that provided a gentle landing for the birds, was quite effective, Bryden said.
It takes Bryden just 10 minutes to band each bird by hand - each gets a unique colour combination before they fly off.
Polhill Protectors is one of the community groups working to protect the saddlebacks from predators like rats and stoats.
‘‘For this community, the presence of the rare saddleback has become a touchstone for figuring out how we can be neighbourly with our natives, which also includes other threatened birds like kaka, toutouwai (robin) and karearea (falcon),’’ Polhill Protectors member Paul Ward said.
Banding of robins will begin in July. Both projects are funded by the Wellington City Council.
"The idea of the study is to work out how long the birds are lasting outside of these fenced areas." Ecologist Dave Bryden