Falcons unleash talons on cyclists
Cyclists are under attack on a central North Island trail.
Nesting falcons Sery and Ford have been swooping, talons drawn, at cyclists and small dogs on a popular piece of the Te Ara Ahi cycleway, just south of Rotorua.
The message from the pair of ka¯ rearea is simple: stay away from our young.
The Rotorua Trails Trust is recommending a detour around the Hemo Gorge section of the trail, which runs through the edge of the Whakarewarewa Forest.
Mountainbiker Steve Birch was heading through a couple of days ago when he felt talons scrape his helmet.
He turned to photograph the falcon swooping on his friend Stephen Millar who was following close behind.
‘‘The falcons have been swooping at everybody who has been cycling through,’’ Birch said.
‘‘Now I think they should close that track because hundreds of people are cycling through every day.’’
If the birds are coming at you head-on you can see them dive from a height, he said, but sometimes they come from the side.
‘‘You can hear the screech, then bang on your helmet as the talons make contact.’’
It’s something he has come across on various forest trails over the past couple of years and it’s exciting to watch, Birch said.
But he thinks it must be pretty tiring for the birds on such a popular trail, with one protecting the nest and the other searching for food.
The nest was in a bank, Birch said, and he was able to see two chicks inside through a spotting scope being used to monitor it.
Given the popularity of this trail, especially in the holiday period, Birch thought it should be closed for about four weeks while the falcons nested.
He planned to speak to a member of Rotorua Trails Trust about the idea.
On Facebook, the trust ‘‘highly recommended’’ a detour. A man who robbed a terminally-ill drug dealer and then repeatedly lied while being questioned about his crime has had his prison sentence slashed – for apologising to his victim’s family and offering them money.
Dennis Edward Bullen was jailed in January 2017 along with Lynne Amanda Jackson and another accomplice after they robbed her long-time friend, Colin Farrell, in Marlborough’s Wairau Valley.
They left him beaten and tied up by a rural highway.
But the Court of Appeal quashed the pair’s sentences – of five years and nine months for Bullen and five years six months for Jackson – after deciding they were unduly harsh.
A panel of judges ruled the pair, from Blenheim, should have been given more lenient sentences, of four years and six months each.
Bullen’s was cut further after the court decided the original sentencing judge had not taken into account his remorse – and his selling his motorbike to give the victim’s family $1000.
Bullen, then 55, and Jackson, 52, robbed Farrell, a 60-year-old decorator and plasterer with a chronic lung illness, in December 2015.
Farrell was lured to a secluded country road near Blenheim on the pretext of a cannabis deal.