IN OTHER NEWS... juvenile blackbird saves camera lady from grumpy, dehydrated bush rat...
During the Christmas break, I was washing my windows at the side of our house. I was working under the eave of the roof, when I suddenly heard the chit! chit! chit! alarm call. I was quite startled by it because it was so incredibly close. The sound was coming from directly above. When I looked up, I was shocked to see a bush rat peering down at me from the gutter. Its head and upper body was drooping down in my direction. I can imagine at this point that some of you might be screaming on the inside while reading this. I was quite calm actually, and I’ll tell you why. The rats eyes were very dull. The lights were almost out, and well, generally I’m too fascinated with nature to waste time being afraid.
What surprised me the most was the sight of a juvenile blackbird that was sitting very close to the rat. I recognised this bird, as it is a regular visitor here, and spends most of the day on the deck. This juvenile blackbird was incredibly noisy: chit! chit! chit! It was hopping closer and closer to the rat, while peering down in my direction. This is absurd given how scared birds are of rats ordinarily.
The juvenile blackbird felt the need to warn me, protect me perhaps? The rat may have been considering a swan dive into my bucket of water, or goodness knows what? Eventually the rat became more alert, and scampered off, but not as fast as I would expect. As it moved away I noticed a large wriggling bulge on one side of the stomach. Seemed to me that this rat was soon to give birth. It was a particularly hot sunny day, so no doubt it was very dehydrated. I watched the rat return to its nest, which was in a nikau tree adjacent to our deck. I managed to take this photograph of it looking in my direction. Admittedly
I do think mum is rather cute to look at.
We have very good, humane rat traps on the property, but whenever possible we prefer to work with nature. Later on that night we floodlit the tree with our external spotlight. Our resident morepork would have been most appreciative, I’m sure.
I prefer more pleasant surprises than the one mentioned above, and there have been quite a few pleasant surprises over the holiday period. The one I want to mention briefly, is sibling behaviour with some bird species. In the December/January publication of Ponsonby News, I mentioned having observed two blackbird siblings feeding one another when the parent was absent. Recently I saw exactly the same thing happen with two sibling tui birds. These delightful juvenile tui birds like to chase each other around and when they stop to sample the fruit on the deck, they share it with one another. It’s a hard thing to explain, so I am delighted to have caught this image. I’m loving having these young tui birds around, and I can’t wait to share more of their antics with you next month. (HEIDI PADAIN)
To see some of Heidi’s other photographic work go to www.flickr.com and type Heidi Padain into the search box, or, you can contact Heidi by email hidihi@xtra.co.nz