Saddleback (bird)
Saddle bird ( Philesturnus carunculatus )
The saddle bird or Tieke ( Philesturnus carunculatus ) is a New Zealand bird of the family of cloth birds, which also includes the kokako and the extinct Huia belong. The species includes two subspecies, the North Island Saddle bird ( P. c. Rufusater ) and the South Island Saddle bird ( P. c. Carunculatus ).
Description
The bird is glossy black with a nut-brown saddle-shaped patch on back and upper wings. Like all species of the family he has the beak on both sides of a colored ( bright red when Tieke ) skin appendages.
The Tieke is up to 25 centimeters long and weighs 75 grams, which is slightly more than a blackbird. The beak is short and very strong.
Behavior
The Tieke are bad flyers. Therefore, they usually jump from branch to branch, but can also fly short distances. Saddle birds occupy a territory that they mark by singing at dawn. Your threatening behavior against rivals comprises nod, fanning out the tail and trills, thereby swell the flesh appendage to the beak. In direct challenge it comes to fights, where the opponents try to attack the appendages.
The birds are known for their fearlessness and their noisy behavior. They were therefore already on the European naturalists of the 19th century.
Tieke nest in epiphytes, tree ferns or tree cavities, often near the bottom. The boys also leave the nest to umherzuhüpfen in the typical noisy way to the floor.
Nutrition
Tieke are mainly insectivores. They tear with her beak pieces of bark from trees and eat the insects beneath it, but also search the leaf litter for food. In addition to insects, they also take on fruits and nectar.
Tieke in the culture of the Māori
The common name in New Zealand " Tieke " is derived from its typical reputation "ti -e- ke- ke- ke- ke ". They have an important role in the beliefs of Māori traditional. Will you cry from the right, this should be a good omen, screams from the left, however, an unfavorable.
A legend of Māori reported as the bird got his saddle: The demigod Maui was thirsty after his fight with the sun. He asked the Tieke to bring him water. This pretended not to hear him. So the Mad Maui grabbed the bird with his hand still hot and left a stigma on his back.
Population decline and conservation
Your breeding behavior near the bottom and there umherhüpfenden boys make the kind particularly sensitive to introduced predators such as martens, as well as against house rat and brown rat. Therefore, both subspecies disappeared rapidly from the two main islands of New Zealand. At the end of the 20th century they were to be found only in Iceland Hen ( Hen and Chickens Islands ) before Northland and in the far south of Big South Cape Iceland Iceland before Stewart.
The rats reached in 1963 Big South Cape Iceland, presumably with boats " Mutton Birders " on the hunt for shearwaters ( titi or Muttonbird ) were. Just a quick rescue operation of the New Zealand Wildlife Service (now Department of Conservation ) saved the local subspecies from extinction, while the local populations of the Südinselschnepfe, the forest panties and the Great New Zealand bat fell victim to the rats. 36 Tieke were brought from this island to other, rat -free islands and established themselves there.
Today, the population of the southern subspecies is estimated again to 700 birds on 11 small islands. The northern subspecies was resettled at numerous coastal islands, even on the North Island in 2002 re-established a breeding colony in the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington. The rescue of the Tieke is regarded in New Zealand as one of the main achievements of nature conservation.
Pictures
Tieke, feeding on a flower of New Zealand flax
Swell
- Sheet at BirdLife
- Rod Morris and Hal Smith: Wild South: Saving New Zealand 's endangered birds. Random house NZ Limited, 1995.
- John Dawson, Rob Lucas: Nature guide to the New Zealand forest. Godwit, 2000.
- Chloe Talbot Kelly: Collins hand guide to the birds of New Zealand. Collins, 1982.