Looking for New Zealand's most elusive bird
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- Behind the sound of footfall, the chatter of silvereyes and the clatter of weka, there is silence. Standing in a grove of old beech trees, ferns and spiky-leaved dracophyllum in a gully near the edge of Abel Tasman National Park, ornithologist Rhys Buckingham listens into the forest as he has listened into the forest for over 40 years.
Again, silence.
Buckingham has been on the trail of the South Island kōkako since 1977. That year, while walking towards the head of Lake Monowai in Fiordland, in the quiet of dusk, he heard “an ethereal tolling bell call”.
“I was almost hypnotised by this beautiful call,” he tells Frank Film. “It’s like a cathedral bell or a church bell, continuously ringing. Once you have heard this amazing call of the South Island kōkako it would be hard to stop looking for it.”
At 75, Buckingham is now retired, living in Māpua in the South Island’s Tasman Bay. But still he makes repeated expeditions into the deep forests of Te Waipounamu, searching for evidence of a bird now known as the “grey ghost”. The South Island kōkako, he says, must be on its way out. Predator numbers are increasing; its habit of hopping or bounding along the forest floor makes it even more vulnerable. A recording on a motion-sensor video camera, one of the 21 installed in the area, shows a small, hunched figure. “Damned rat,” he mutters.
But still he is confident. Buckingham has had several glimpses of the South Island kōkako, including on Stewart Island in 1984, then near Nelson Lakes in 1996. In 2020 he was servicing a camera near this gully when he heard two calls identical to that of the North Island kōkako. “What was absolutely and truly remarkable is after these wonderful calls the tūī above me, which had been making normal calls up until then, started making alarm calls. One of the birds started copying one of the kōkako that called. It was a dramatic change.”
Now, he looks around the still forest.
“There’s a bird here somewhere.”
Bigger than a tūī, smaller than a kererū, the South Island kōkako with its distinctive orange wattle is - or was - part of an ancient family of wattled birds that includes the now-extinct huia, the North and South Island saddleback and the North Island kōkako, brought back from the brink of extinction in recent decades. It once populated the forests on both sides of the Southern Alps, on Stewart Island and in parts of Otago and Southland but even by the late 1800s numbers seemed to be declining.
In 2007, after no accepted sightings for 40 years, it was declared extinct, but a sighting that year was later accepted by the Ornithological Society and in 2013 its status was reclassified to “Data deficient”. The South Island Kōkako Trust, co-founded by Buckingham in 2010, now offers a $10,000 reward for conclusive evidence that the bird exists. Last year, global conservation movement Re:wild added the South Island kōkako to its list of the Top 25 Most Wanted Lost Species.
Further glimpses and descriptions of its melancholic, echo-ey call have kept the notoriously secretive bird in the public imagination.
But evidence remains tantalisingly out of reach. A photographic slide taken near Haast in the 1950s or ‘60s is now lost to history; a kōkako-like feather found on Stewart Island in 1986 was missing for decades before turning up, uncatalogued, in an envelope in Te Papa Tongarewa; a 20-second recording thought to be two kōkako taken near Charleston in 1998 was destroyed in a fire. “An absolute tragedy,” says Buckingham.
In “Looking for New Zealand's most elusive bird”, Frank Film includes footage taken by director Gerard Smyth in 2001 with Buckingham and former Wildlife Service ranger Ron Nilsson in Granville Forest between Greymouth and Reefton. In the footage, Nilsson, who died last year, plays back a recording of the North Island kōkako. Within seconds a bird responds. Nilsson freezes in intense concentration. It was “very very interesting”, Buckingham says now. Was it a copycat song from a kākā, bellbird or tūī? “It might have been a response from kōkako,” he says.
Such almost-close encounters - and his hope that future generations will hear this “amazing call” in its natural habitat - keep him returning to the remote areas of the South Island bush.
“I’m sustained by these moments when the bird decides to reveal itself. Usually when I’m just on the point of thinking, I give up - the bird calls. I’m hooked for another five years.”
Credits:
Producer/Director/Cameraman/Interviewer: Gerard Smyth
Camera Operator - Grant Findlay
2nd Camera Operator - Romah Chorley
Editor: Tracey Jury
Online Editor: Andy Johnson
Writer: Sally Blundell
Researcher: Erina Ellis
Production Manager: Jo Ffitch
Sound Design/Mix: Chris Sinclair
Attributions:
North Island Kōkako footage supplied by Geoff Reid
Image Attributions:
Tūhura Otago Museum
South Island Kōkako Charitable Trust
11 minutes of heart warming content. Thank you.
its easier to sleep at night knowing theres people like him out there doing what ought be done!
Having heard the North Island Kokako once, I can imagine how beautiful this bird's song must be. I live in hope and hope to be in a position to help with conservation efforts if the bird is found. Until then, Matuku and Pateke are the birds on which my efforts are spent. They might not be as glamorous but they still deserve to be a part of our ecosystem and have a beauty that is understated.
Might be educational to add Banded rails & crakes to the interest list. They seem to be in similar situation to bitterns & under the radar. Few are seen apart from as cat toys.
@@johnmead8437 funny you should say that. We do keep an eye on spotless crake numbers and we had a very disappointing count last year. Our team went out with Auckland Zoo and we managed to hear a grand total of 1 crake and we couldn't rule out that it wasn't one of the other team's recordings that we heard so we're definitely aware there's an issue. Bittern numbers look surprisingly good this year at least despite the flooding. We've seen good numbers and the Pateke count is good too, though we haven't done a proper count for a while.
I'm not aware of any banded rails in our wetland area but I'll see if i can find someone who knows. Ideally we don't want to be spending any amount of time in the areas that they would be found in though, as with the other birds. They won't stay in an area if they are disturbed too often so we're limited in how many counts we can do and which species we focus on.
Always fantastic to hear from someone who is living a life that they love. He's a lucky man to be spending those twilight years in the bush and I hope he's got many more to come!
Such a good film, thanks for this!
An approachable & knowledgeable (possibly keenly optimistic) expert on birds is Rhys, like Ken on moose. A couple of days in the scrub with him would be educational for your future channel content & presentation of issues with rare species. This species might persist in a few sites ranging from quite accessible to remote and difficult, so more options exist than the likes of moose hunting.
Wow... Wonderful ...Thank you for posting
You're legendary , thanks brother 🙏
I have been doing a lot of work for the Ark in the Park in the Waitakere Ranges for the last 10 years. The North Island Kokako has a truly majestic and reverberating call, and I have only heard it a handful of times in the past decade. So, I cannot even fathom the haunting existence and how mystical the South Island kokako would be in the forests of the South Island.
thanks for this comment i haven't heard of Ark in the Park
I like to do it also there in New Zealand zoon. A great experience finding and photographing birds.
Kia ora I am now hooked
Nga mihi nui kia koe
beautiful bird
lovely content, I live in Auckland but i wish i could join
It's a real shame DoC dropped the ball on this species. The recent records provided when DoC was created were disdainfully ignored due to the observers not being select staff or scientists, an intellectual snobbery that has thrived in their ranks. Repeated 20 years later, about the time its status was reviewed and removed from "extinct". The possibility they persist seems finite, it would be reward for many years effort for Rhys to get sound proof.
nga mihi nui ... thanks, loved this
Thank you so much !
Don't think that 1080 is helping!😢
I think that 1080 is helping greatly
Hold on to hope
Many lost species are out there
Maybe there is an island in New Zealand which is uninhabited by humans , and where both the huja and kukaku birds live happily.
right on mate!
Great Docos Frank. Real homegrown stuff. I’m from chch but live in Australia and miss the South Island and its special places and species so is great to always see the backyard of home!
Is this show real or fake? Just the way some of the people talk in the videos and how it seems acted
God bless you brother🙏🏽
🦜🤠
🙏 best for NZ pretators free island .
No another place on earth so an bird country was like aotearoa.
Saving your nature or be nothing else then ordinary world?
Sorry but trues... NZ i trust mostly to acting for they land to protect.