Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him. 

                                                  IN PRAISE OF THE TUI

I’m a volunteer guide going out every so often to the open sanctuary island Tiritiri Matangi. Birds, being saved from the predators found on the mainland, are one of the great attractions, and of course over the years I’ve become more aware of our indigenous birds  - the cheeky toutouwai [North Island Robin] who will hop ahead of people on the tracks looking for mites to eat; the piwakawaka [fantail] who has a similar strategy, though it comes behind walkers, not before them; the endlessly chattering tieke [saddleback]; the elegant and very elusive kokako, hiding in the forest but occasionally giving out its mournful cry, the nearest thing to the out-breathing of an Aue! But when it comes to the birds on the island, my favourite was the kereru – formidable and bulky in size, falsely called a wood pigeon, flying through the tracks with the woop-woop sound of its long and busy wings; and also known for its eating and sleeping routines. The kereru eats berries and then sits on a bough allowing its food to ferment as it sleeps. I regard the kereru as a happy drunk. My ideal of the lazy life.

                                                       A happy fat kereru

But there’s another bird that now gains my attention. In the right season, when you have tramped up to the centre where you can get a cup of tea, you will find tuis quarrelling. Tuis are aggressive and quarrelsome birds, not attacking human beings but attacking one another, vying to be first to sip the sugar-water that has been prepared for them. Tuis are nectar birds - that is, they drink the sweet water from flowers. But then there are smaller nectar birds, korimako [bellbird] and hihi [stitchbird] who seek the same sustenance. To protect these smaller birds, cages on the island, holding sweeter water, are deliberately designed with openings too small for the aggressive tuis to get in. If tuis could go in, they would intimidate and chase away the smaller birds.

            So far, I’m giving tuis a bad rap, aren’t I? This is very unfair. Unlike some other birds, tuis are in no danger of extinction. They proliferate all over suburbia  … at least that is true in Auckland. And as I write, a group of tuis are occupying our Australian bottle-tree with its bright-red flowers, giving the same pleasure we get when the pohutukawa blooms in our back yard. The tuis come along when summer is approaching, unlike the nuisance magpies that worry our back yard with baleful noises and take over the tree in winter. It is a pleasure to hear the click-wark-rattle-awk-ock of the male tui asserting his presence. No – despite old lore, tuis do not have two voice-boxes. What they do have are nine sets of muscles that allow them to amplify and produce many noises. And of course tuis feathers are not only black and white. That idea was the fault of colonial settlers in the 19^th century, who quaintly called the tui “the parson bird” because they didn’t notice how iridescent the tui’s feathers were.

                                                         Tui in its glory
 

Incredibly cheeky footnote: I was never persuaded that Denis Glover’s “quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle” sounded anything like that call of a magpie. But I do think I have caught a tui’s “click-wark-rattle-awk-ock” accurately… or at least the tui in my tree.