Naturally West: Tauhou thrive on winter treats

Our most frequent and endearing garden

visitor at this time of year is the silvereye

or tauhou (the Māori word for stranger or new arrival). It’s common names of silvereye, white eye or wax eye refer not to the actual eye colour, but to the distinctive white ring around the eye.

Silvereye are considered a native bird and have had residency in New Zealand for nearly 200 years, being first recorded in 1832.

They are widespread across many habitats, enjoying native forest as well as suburbia, where they are one of our most common birds, especially if your garden caters to their diet which includes fruits, nectar and insects. They are very partial to sugar water. Although I have always considered this sweet treat a dubious gift (yes, birds can get diabetes!), none of the conservation-based organisations have a problem with it. In survival of birds over winter and to enhance threatened bird species.

We do therefore feed our local tauhou population sugar water over the winter months, and given the vicinity of our homemade feeder to our kitchen window, we get much entertainment from watching them twitter and tussle for their turn, despite there being space for a whole line up of tauhou on the feeder. A flock of a dozen can clean up a wine bottle full of sugar water in a few days, though we are yet to see a tūī join them. If you too would like to feed your local nectar lovers, make a brew of one part sugar to eight parts water. Most people use white sugar but Zealandia, the Karori bird sanctuary (www. visitzealandia.com) recommends using brown sugar or raw sugar, 1/4 cup to 1L water. Once you have made your brew you will need a bird feeder to put it in. You can buy sugar water feeders online https://www. backyardbirds.co.nz/tui-feeder1. (shown bottom left) using a wine bottle without a lid, and some scrap wood, even

pallet wood would work. You could also attach four strings to the

base of a 1.5 litre plastic bottle with duct tape, tying the strings together at the top so the bottle hangs upside down. Punch some holes ½ cm up the bottle neck to allow the

sugar water to escape into the dish. Glue the bottle lid to a shallow dish and then fill the

bottle with the sugar water, screw the lid/ dish on to the bottle and turn upside down. You can then hang the bottle from a tree or

place the dish on a flat surface well off the ground. Another alternative is to add sugar water directly into a hanging saucer.

Feeders should be washed every few days with very hot water and kept clean to fact they promote it as a means to improve

Tauhou feasting on a saucer of sugar water. Photo by Nicola Pye.

prevent the growth of mould. Zealandia also suggests making fruit skewers for silvereyes: they enjoy the juice

from a halved and skewered orange. They

FRINGEADLTD.pdf 1 15/11/16 16:33 htm or you can make your own. Our sugar water bird feeder using a wine bottle and wooden cradle My husband made our one are known to visit bird feeders more than any other species in New Zealand, and enjoy fat, lard or cracker or bread crumbs when we put them out.

Tauhou naturally thrive in a garden with a good layer of mulch or leaf litter to promote their diet which includes spiders, moths, beetles and earthworms, nectar from kōwhai, fuchsia, eucalypts, bottlebrushes and more, and small berries. In my garden they enjoy extracting nectar from various salvias in flower in the autumn.

Tauhou can damage ripening fruit in vineyards and orchards, including grapes, apricots, cherries and apples. On the positive side, they eat aphids and are a major predator of overwintering codling moth caterpillars. They also spread seeds of native trees and shrubs, including kahikatea and coprosmas and they assist with pollination of some tree species such as kōwhai and fuchsia An easy to make feeder using a when feeding on nectar. plastic bottle and string

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