naturally west with fiona drummond
Tauhou thrive on winter treats Our most frequent and endearing garden (shown bottom left) using a wine bottle visitor at this time of year is the silvereye without a lid, and some scrap wood, even or tauhou (the Māori word for stranger pallet wood would work. or new arrival). It’s common names of You could also attach four strings to the silvereye, white eye or wax eye refer not to base of a 1.5 litre plastic bottle with duct the actual eye colour, but to the distinctive tape, tying the strings together at the top so white ring around the eye. the bottle hangs upside down. Punch some Silvereye are considered a native bird holes ½ cm up the bottle neck to allow the and have had residency in New Zealand sugar water to escape into the dish. Glue the for nearly 200 years, being first recorded bottle lid to a shallow dish and then fill the in 1832. bottle with the sugar water, screw the lid/ They are widespread across many habitats, dish on to the bottle and turn upside down. enjoying native forest as well as suburbia, You can then hang the bottle from a tree or where they are one of our most common place the dish on a flat surface well off the birds, especially if your garden caters to ground. Another alternative is to add sugar their diet which includes fruits, nectar and water directly into a hanging saucer. insects. They are very partial to sugar water. Feeders should be washed every few days Although I have always considered this with very hot water and kept clean to sweet treat a dubious gift (yes, birds can get prevent the growth of mould. diabetes!), none of the conservation-based Zealandia also suggests making fruit organisations have a problem with it. In Tauhou feasting on a saucer of sugar water. Photo by skewers for silvereyes: they enjoy the juice fact they promote it as a means to improve Nicola Pye. from a halved and skewered orange. They survival of birds over winter and to enhance threatened bird species. are known to visit bird feeders more than any other species in New We do therefore feed our local tauhou population sugar water over Zealand, and enjoy fat, lard or cracker or bread crumbs when we put the winter months, and given the vicinity of our homemade feeder to them out. our kitchen window, we get much entertainment from watching them Tauhou naturally thrive in a garden twitter and tussle for their turn, despite there being space for a whole with a good layer of mulch or leaf line up of tauhou on the feeder. A flock of a dozen can clean up a wine litter to promote their diet which bottle full of sugar water in a few includes spiders, moths, beetles and days, though we are yet to see a earthworms, nectar from kōwhai, tūī join them. fuchsia, eucalypts, bottlebrushes If you too would like to feed and more, and small berries. In my your local nectar lovers, make garden they enjoy extracting nectar a brew of one part sugar to from various salvias in flower in the eight parts water. Most people autumn. use white sugar but Zealandia, Tauhou can damage ripening fruit the Karori bird sanctuary (www. in vineyards and orchards, including visitzealandia.com) recommends grapes, apricots, cherries and using brown sugar or raw sugar, apples. On the positive side, they 1/4 cup to 1L water. eat aphids and are a major predator Once you have made your brew of overwintering codling moth you will need a bird feeder to put caterpillars. They also spread seeds it in. You can buy sugar water of native trees and shrubs, including feeders online https://www. kahikatea and coprosmas and they backyardbirds.co.nz/tui-feeder1. assist with pollination of some tree htm or16:33 you can make your own. species such as kōwhai and fuchsia An easy to make feeder using a FRINGEADLTD.pdf 1 15/11/16 Our sugar water bird feeder using a My husband made our one when feeding on nectar. wine bottle and wooden cradle plastic bottle and string
P R E S L A N D a n d C O LT D C
M
Y
B A R R I S T E R S E S T
&
S O L I C I T O R S
1 9 8 9
CM
MY
CY
0 9 8 1 8 1 0 71
This space is being seen by up to 70,000 local residents. It could be yours for as little as $240 + GST, or 0.33 cents per reader. Email info@fringemedia.co.nz or phone 817 8024 to find out more. (For all our rates, download our media kit from http://www.fringemedia.co.nz/Rates.html.)
m y l a w y e r . c o . n z
CMY
K
Presland and Co provide a variety of legal services including conveyancing, family law, criminal law, wills & estates.
please support our advertisers – they support us
The Fringe AUGUST 2020
21
