Ruud Kleinpaste: Tauhou – The Numbers

A couple of weeks ago we talked about feeding birds in your garden. In view of a decent week off, Jack was training his birds to do without food – slowly getting them used to going and finding food elsewhere for the next week or so. 

I realised that this requires some scientific back-up with observations from the distant past and very recent past, to see if the Tauhoa are really going to be affected by a week or so of no fodder. 

About 18 years ago (I was living in Auckland – before I saw the light) my office was looking out over a trained citrus bush, right outside my window. From time to time flocks of silvereyes would visit in winter to look for scale insects and mealybugs, aphids and other delicacies. 

I love this biological control and kept an eye on these birds – always been interested in birds, even more so later in life. 

When the flocks kept on returning regularly, in spring I decided to take a look at what they were after and discovered a decent but unwanted population of scale insects that were causing quite a bit of pressure on my lemon (they also attract ants that feed on “honeydew” excreted by scale insects). 

Luckily, a good flock of Tauhou descended and started working away at eating scales. Pictures show that this removed more than 50% of the sap-sucking plant pests. 

Before helpers.

5 minutes after help arrived! 

Not only were those little birds a great indicator of certain damaging garden pests, they were actually part of the Biological Control Squad. 

In summer, they kept on coming back to the citrus to decimate the scale population. 

In our current garden we feed the Tauhou with those meatballs from the Mad Butcher. I also make lard blocks, presented to them in small, metal cages. 

Up to 40 birds at a time of census!!  

So… I stopped feeding them for 5 days, just to see what would happen. 

They were not impressed at all!! Kept on flying into their tree where the food parcels used to hang. Making lots of noise – “bad mood Bear”. 

Other species were also returning to the food cart (sparrows, Green finches, Starlings and chaffinches). 

It slowly tapered off to a dozen or fewer than that – but they always flew over the site for a check-up.  And in the end a couple would sit in their food tree for a bit of preening. 

I discovered that Silvereyes have a routine of visiting the local feeding stations in people’s garden. I reckon they have a circular trajectory from our place to Jan’s next door, 50 meters east, then across the road and another one (or two) west, and as far as 200 meters away, before returning to our side of the road via neighbours a few houses down (north-west);  

I reckon they usually fly clock-wise. 

When I hung up a fresh ball and timed the return, this morning, after 5 days of no food, it took 3 minutes before 19 Tauhou were gorging themselves – this grew to the usual congestion and fights 5 minutes later. 

One other little experiment took place this year by banding a good number of silvereyes in our garden in autumn and winter: it was total of 81 individuals (73 newly banded and 8 “recaptures” – older birds). 

In the past week I attempted to count feeding flocks of around 30 birds – the average number of banded silvereyes was around 2 and a half (2.5) of those 30. 

I know… It’s pretty hard to count those fast-moving birds! And you never know if you’ve missed a banded individual when you quickly count the chaos before you. 

If 1/12th of the birds you see are banded, (and you have 81 banded individuals in the po

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Rude climb pass as our man in the Garden Killer
A rude.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Cure it Jack yep in the garden. All right.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I got back, got back last night from a from
a few days away, which was very, very lovely and luxurious.
And of course the first thing I did is ran
inside put the jug on. My wife said, what are
you doing. You're making a cup of coffee. I said no.
She said, oh, for goodness sake, she said, are you
feeding the birds? And I was like, yeah, well they've
gone four days.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I haven't.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
I haven't been able to fill out their feet. It's
for four whole days. And you'll be pleased to know
that first thing this morning, once I put out some
new food for them, went out there, first thing this morning,
all the tohoe were back, all the silver eyes were back.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
That's right, that's exactly, That's exactly how it works. Say,
I love I love the fact that you do that,
because I think that gives you, It gives you for me,
the fact that you've got a really nice heart. I
love that.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, even if the toho don't, cause I'm not sure,
it's the most nutritious necessarily, but oh.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
No, it's it's good that they will know what's good
for them, to be quite honest, because you know, I
used the mad butcher balls of or you know, and
pressed together and frozen and then they thaw it slowly.
So basically when you when you told me that story
last time, that you were worried about them, I thought,
I'm going to try and try and do some trials

(01:30):
to see what happened. And and that trial actually started
already eighteen years ago when I lived in Auckland. I
was in my on my on my on my seat
in the in the office, and outside my office window
was a wonderful plant, a citrus plant. It was actually
a lemon, and suddenly a whole lot of these toho

(01:52):
came on the lemon and they mucked around. I took
photos of it, and it was actually one but they
were only a meter away from on the other side
of the glass. And the cool thing was that later
on in spring they were back again, and I was
just wondering, what the hell is going going on? So
I went outside and found they had been eating scale
in sects on the particular lemon tree and so I

(02:14):
took photos off the scale in sects. They came back.
Ten minutes later they were gone again, and I took
the same photo of the same twig and noticed that
half of the scale in sects had gone in ten minutes.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
If you're a gardener, you know the scaling sects are
real pinned a butt And Taho was basically my biological control.
So that was that. Now, later in life I actually
got involved in bending. As you know, I do a
lot of bird bending, including taho. I did about forty
three yesterday and about sixty the day before, so it's

(02:54):
been pretty busy here. But here comes the thing when
I look at the balls of meat in the garden
and I see how many birds have got rings on them,
and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't actually
that many, And so I've written it all down so
it will be all on the website that Libby will
check on. The interesting thing is that I came to

(03:16):
the conclusion in the end that in my garden on
efverats there were almost a thousand towho passing through.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
No, yes, thousand, yes.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
At nine hundred and seventy two I think was my
number there you go.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
This is and that's not You're not eating, you think.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
No, no, no, no, not at all, because you know,
let's say you got thirty in a tree or on
the block, and off the thirty only two and a
half I think it was two and a half. Have
got a band on which is one in twelve, you
know what I mean. So then and then you start
looking on and on and on, and you count it

(03:58):
all up with all my neighbors and all other stuff
as well, and in the end you realize that there
are almost a thousand coming past every day.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Rereadable. Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
So this is where education brings me. That's what I
do with maths and teachers and kids. Yeah, and that
is real McCoy stuff. So these these toeh, by the way,
also do a certain circuit and if you are stopping feeding,
they'll go to the other four or five houses in
the neighborhood and they know exactly where to get their talker.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Well, they're back at my place now.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
I love it. I love it. I love it very good.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Hey, thanks of us for that.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, don't you forget to watch that video. I put
a video opposite of the creek. It's a noisy, noisy stuff.
You love it so good?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, yeah, all little, all of them feeding away. So
we'll make sure that's available at Newstalks, hidb dot co
dot inwards. Last Jack, we'll catch again next week next
Roade Route climb pass in the Garden for us.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
to news talks he'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.