Monday, December 17, 2012

Our resident morepork has been silenced


Sadly, we’ll no longer enjoy the call of the morepork (ruru) that we often heard at night in the reserve behind our house. We had some friends around for a barbecue last night and one of our guests, while inspecting the garden, happened to look up into a big plum tree by our back fence and saw a large dead bird suspended in the branches. Closer investigation showed it to be a morepork – presumably the one that has been resident all these years.

I took the body to the local DOC ranger today, thinking it might be of interest. He explained that although moreporks are incredibly skilful fliers, their navigation system can sometimes be affected by storms and gale-force winds (which we’ve had lately). Apparently they have very precise mind maps, and if the branch of a tree (for example) suddenly pops up where they don’t expect it, they can come to grief. We can only assume that’s happened to our bird, which was hooked up in a tangle of branches and was dangling upside down.

Very sad, because it was a beautiful bird. I left it with DOC because they thought someone might be able to use the feathers. I might put up a “vacancy” sign by the entrance to the reserve and see if we can attract another one.

2 comments:

Jigsaw said...

We usually leave the lights on our deck switched on in the evenings and this attracts a morepork who we can watch as he swoops down to collect moths attracted by the light. The neatest sight is in early Spring when we have often seen the male catch a large moth and after ripping it's wings off present it to the female. They are incredibly silent flyers and their call at night is a very comforting sound.

Lalaland said...

I came across your blog researching why we don't hear our morepork. I believe they are effectied by rat poison Diphacinone: the council set these traps everywhere to kill mice and rats. But secondary poisoning kills our birds and pets. We need more public awakes of the dangers of these toxins.