"They can hover like great bees or humming birds in front of blossoms.
With the sunlight falling full on the splendid gold of the outspread wings,
or the deep blacks and pure whites of head and neck, the male then appears
not a bird but a huge brilliant tropical butterfly - a magnificent creature
indeed."
It was to
Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua that I went recently with these words of
the naturalist Guthrie-Smith in mind to see Hihi, the stitchbird, but although
I saw very many Tieke, the saddleback, sadly I did not see any stitchbirds.
Hihi is one
of three New Zealand honeyeaters but unlike the Tui and Korimako, the bellbird,
Hihi became extinct from the New Zealand mainland around 1885 and is now
an endangered species.
A single
self-sustaining population of the species of several thousand remained
on Little Barrier Island until the 1980s when in an attempt to establish
further populations and ensure the long term survival of the species, the
Department of Conservation translocated Hihi to various off shore islands
as well as Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua.
Unfortunately
these translocations have not been as successful as expected and Hihi translocated
to Kapiti (1983, 1985 and 1990), Cuvier (1982 and 1884) and Hen Islands
(1980 and 1981) completely disappeared within a few years while those translocated
to Kapiti (1991 and 1992) and Mokoia (1994) and Tiritiri Matangi (1995
and 1996) have a very high
annual mortality
rate of about 50%.
In 1994,
40 Hihi (20 males and 20 females) were transferred to Mokoia Island but,
according to a recent study aimed at trying at ascertain the reasons for
the high mortality rate published in the New Zealand Veterinary Journal,
the current population remains at about 40.
The stitchbird
decline in the nineteenth century has usually been attributed to some avian
disease, which also seemed to affect the bellbird population at the time.
However the bellbird recovered although its numbers are somewhat precarious
compared with the Tui.
The Tui and
the bellbird are the dominant honeyeaters and in the forest feed on the
canopy while the Hihi feeds on the lower undergrowth and it is this competition
for diminishing nectar supplies which may have hastened the Hihi's decline.
The Hihi would be particularly vulnerable as, according to Guthrie-Smith,
the principal food of the Hihi is nectar. "The hen while sitting is probably
fed on it alone … the nestlings were reared on the same ethereal food;
the male himself almost exclusively lived on it." However, other observers
maintain that fruits and insects form part of the diet.
Also Elsdon
Best reports that Maori attributed the decline of our endemic birds not
only to the European rat but also to the introduced honeybees, a possibility
which seems to have attracted little research in New Zealand although there
has been considerable research on the subject in Australia.
New Zealand
plants, like Australian plants and their pollinators, have evolved for
millions of years not only in isolation but also largely in the absence
of highly competitive social bees such as the honeybee. The native bees
of Australia and New Zealand are solitary bees that do not offer the same
competition for nectar, as do honeybees.
Hihi are
cavity nesters, a rarity in the honeyeater family and a characteristic
that has made them particularly vulnerable to predators. All recorded natural
nests are in cavities located in mature or semi mature forest trees. Guthrie-Smith
went to the trouble of spending time on Little Barrier Island in order
to observe their nesting and mating habits and found, as Maori had said,
that they do indeed build their nests and conceal their eggs in the moss
of the Puriri tree. He found that they return year after the year to the
same nesting hole.
Hihi, slightly
larger than bellbirds with the males larger again, have a variable mating
system including monogamy, polygyny, polyandry and polygynandry. It is
the stress arising from their highly competitive matings which researchers
think may have something to do with the stitchbird's vulnerability to disease.
Mona Gordon
in her book Children of Tane records that these exquisite birds were so
sought after by Maori not only for food but for the brilliant canary yellow
breast feathers that they had disappeared from the South Island on the
arrival of Europeans and were known only in a few heavily forested North
Island localities.
She also
says that its remarkable call rendered "stitch stitch" which has given
rise to its European name conveys nothing of its extreme beauty to the
thousands who will never see it. It is the note it repeats as it comes
to investigate any intruder in its domain.
