Photoessay: The Tui (Prosthemadura novaeseelandiae), Port Chalmers.

For the Tui, spring lies not in the angle of the sun as it begins its slow dissociation from the westward hills, but in the pink-stained depths of fruit tree blossom and in the dark little bead-like flowers of the Pseudopanax bushes.   

Spring and summer are tastes; honey and the brittle/squishy umami of moth and cicada protein.

Tui are large, slightly ungainly birds- endlessly motile, gratuitously vocal honey-eaters and insectivores belonging to an ancient Gondwana order that has radiated scions all over the planet, producing everything from Wrens to Ravens.  They retain all the slightly oafish simian characteristics conferred by an environment devoid of mammalian predators until recently- oversized grappling feet and legs, almost boorish curiosity, arboreal agility and prominent sense of entitlement.  

Halfway through winter they come surging en mass out of the nearby bush into our seaside gardens in their search for the nectar and hatching insects that will fuel their first broods for the year.  On a still day at the end of the season you will realise you are hearing the whipcrack pops, curlicue squawking, liquid fluting, swallowed wails and general broken-synthesiser stylings of their bizarre songs and even recognise the vocal idiosyncrasies of individual birds.  They can mimic human speech with incredible accuracy.  Follow the link by all means for video documentation but prepare yourself for what is possibly the creepiest thing you will hear all year.

This guy (above and centre left) is a large male we call Mr Yelpy, because he is in love with an annoying curling peow! sound that he voices both as an accent and an exclamation, over and over.  And over.  

​His dance and song are apparently intoxicating to lady Tuis (above left), who like what they see when he's at full fluff and volume.  Mr Yelpy has mad flow.

Anyone who's ever tried to photograph a Tui know​s how rare it is to see them static and unobscured; here he is on top of the aviary underneath the blossom tree with a golden dusting of pollen on his cere.  

Black when silhouetted, Tuis are revealed in all their satin-lacquered glory by direct sunlight, wearing pheasant greens and petrol blues and brief flushes of gilded rose and olive alongside their wiry silver capes and bone-white throat tufts.  I have never seen those crazy bouffant throat feathers looking anything less than pristine, despite their messy habits.  Tuis regularly visit the craggy old elders in our upper garden to wipe the stickiness from their faces on the lichen encrusting their branches.

We arrived here twenty years ago and though we were treated to the odd Bellbird (a related native passerine) visit, we would have to venture quite a long way into the bush to encounter a Tui.  

Perhaps another five years passed before we began to notice the Bellbirds sticking around and the odd Tui was making a vocal flyover, but it was a while after that before they decided our amenities were finally up to spec.  Which probably correlates with population pressure due to successful breeding at the nearby Orokonui Sanctuary. 

Revegetation has probably helped tempt them back after the slash and burn and horrendous predation of colonial times.  Both Tui and Bellbirds seem to be returning to their ancestral haunts, possibly due to pest control in some regions; behavioural adaptations possibly play a role in their regeneration, with aggressive birds breeding successfully where their more retiring cousins failed.

Tuis enjoy every moment of their piratical intellect and alpha status in the local avian hierarchy.  Smaller exotic species tend to regard them with affrighted suspicion, probably equating them with crows and they exploit that racial memory, burning off excess calories vigorously trolling hapless finches and blackbirds.  We even saw a young New Zealand Falcon being mobbed by Tuis as it passed over us with a prey item in Sawyers Bay recently.

The sound of their swooping acrobatic passes over obstacles and through seemingly impenetrable vegetation is a violent combination of intense taffeta skirt rustle and a crossbow bolt slicing air beside your ear, thanks to the arrangement of their wing feathers.  Nothing can distract them from their aerial pursuits once they are involved and we are treated to regular near-misses as we top the garden steps and venture across established flyways.

The Lovely R did really well this year to get this suite of images.  We have a window of about two weeks while our Bird Plum blossoms on bare branches; after this, the leaves obscure its occupants and the equinoctial winds arrive to blast away the last of the bloom (they're blowing as I write this).  He used a Tamron 70-300 VC telephoto zoom, wide open at 300 in nearly every shot, if that means anything to you.  (I have to stop him discarding anything that is even slightly out of focus; as a non-photographer who takes photos I deplore the exclusive obsession with focal plane at the expense of every other valuable visual element.)

​Tuis are the embodiment of everything that is lost when our species goes rogue.  It is horribly ironic that in the midst of our gloating exploitation we are cheating ourselves of life's most important metric- the presence of our greater family.  We are so grateful for their forgiveness.

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