Seeking the Karearea in a Land of Few Hawks - Part 2

Where seeing Kahu is easy, finding Karearea is far more challenging. And, as we were told by several Kiwi birders, it is usually a matter of luck. There are certain places one can go where one’s fortunes are enhanced, but there’s never a guarantee. For the first 20 days, the closest we came to encountering the New Zealand Falcon was on a forest road near a native forest (a vanishing endemic ecosystem). It was late afternoon, when we heard the signature “kek-kek-kek-kek-kek-kek” call to the east of our location. My husband managed to catch a glimpse of the Peregrine-sized bird just as it rounded a corner of the woods and disappeared into the trees. That was it. No more calling, no more glimpses. I was afraid my luck had run out, as we weren’t going to be in many more of the “enhanced chances” spots before we headed back to the US.

One day on South Island we stopped on a farm road in the hills between Haast Pass and Wanaka to bird, do some botanizing, and to search for a geocache. My spouse had walked up a stream to a waterfall for the latter, and I had gone in a different direction for the former purposes. From our widely separated positions we heard it: “kek-kek-kek-kek-kek-kek!” Sounding like a Kestrel on steroids, the heavily-streaked dark chocolate-colored bird was circling above us carrying prey. “FALCON!” we each shouted. And then I saw the female, the probable intended recipient of the small bird clutched in the caller’s talons. The vocalizing bird disappeared behind the ridge above me, as the larger bird dropped onto a rock high on the slope. “Grab the camera, I’ve got the female!” I shouted to my husband, now running up the road, but still a couple of hundred meters away.

She was still there when he arrived, panting, but with his lens already in position. The male never came back into view – too bad, because the light was such that a shot of him against the blue sky would have been awesome. Presumably he had touched down somewhere above the female, and was waiting for us to clear out before bringing her his gift. We waited in vain, and finally had to leave. The photo of the female isn’t wonderful; she was just a little too far away.

Karearea. Pai rawa atu!

Seeking the Karearea in a Land of Few Hawks - Part 1

My husband and I had the good fortune to spend almost a month in New Zealand last fall. (It was springtime there.) There aren’t many endemic bird species in that country, but the ones that are there are quite unique and unquestionably amazing. European settlement burgeoned only a little over 150 years ago, and oh, how that changed things. New Zealand’s native terrestrial avifauna consisted of mostly weak-flying or flightless species – think Kiwi, for example. Europeans missed their birds from home, consequently most of the birds one easily sees now are those commonly seen in the UK: Blackbirds, Song Thrushes, Chaffinches, Skylarks, European Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Yellowhammers, and more. There were no native land mammals in New Zealand either, so in addition to birds and domestic pets, rabbits, sheep, stoats, ferrets (to “eliminate” the Polynesian rats introduced earlier by the Maori), and the omnivorous Australian brush-tailed possum were brought in. These actions spelled doom for native birds.

Raptors might have helped keep the small mammal population in check, but for the fact that New Zealand has only two raptor species, the Australasian Harrier (Maori name: Kahu) and the New Zealand Falcon (Karearea). The Kahu is fairly widespread across the lands of the southwestern Pacific, but the falcon is endemic to New Zealand. Naturally, this latter fact put the Karearea at the top of my “must see” list (along with Kiwi, Kokako, and Rifleman).

From the very first day leaving Aukland Kahus were seen, soaring over meadows and hillsides, skimming grassland and marsh, weaving through hedgerows. Resembling Turkey Vultures in flight, they have a deeper dihedral than do our Northern Harriers. Sometimes they are seen in groups, coursing above the landscape. Kahus feed on small prey like mice and insects, but carrion comprises a large part of their diet, making these birds vulnerable to collisions with vehicles.

Part 2:  The Karearea