Environment – Watch out for robins

After a long hot summer I’m looking forward to some cooler weather and a bit of rain.

I’m not alone in this. A lot of our birds are finding pickings a bit thin and the Wenderholm hillsides are dotted with browning taraire trees, which struggle in the extreme dry. We can’t do much for the trees but simply by keeping a birdbath topped up in your garden you can make a big difference to the birds around your place.

The Coast had a good spring with lots of birds breeding successfully. Shakespear Open Sanctuary’s 10 pairs of North Island robins produced their usual 30-plus offspring as they have done since they were introduced there in 2016.

Interestingly the number of pairs has stayed pretty constant – we lose a few adults each year and some young birds take their place but the majority of young are lost.

Most of the “lost” birds will actually have dispersed out of the park. Young robins have a characteristic of dispersing widely in search of good areas to set up home. This happened at Wenderholm where robins spread from the park to the back of Puhoi and further.

We know dispersal is happening here too. Last year a young robin (hatched in the bottom of Kowhai Glen at Shakespear Regional Park) was found dead in Whangaparaoa. Robins spend a lot of time feeding on the ground and are very trusting, so they do fall prey to a range of predators. Without these predators, robins could happily live in pockets of bush along the peninsula, as whiteheads (another small native bird reintroduced to the park) are already doing on properties outside the park.

If you do see a robin it will likely have bands on its legs – if you can photograph these or note them and contact the park it would be fascinating to have these records.

Of more practical use to the robin are two things you could do; contact

Pest Free Hibiscus Coast to find out about pest trapping in your neighbourhood, which is simple and accessible, and secondly check out ways of reducing the impact cats have on birds.