Ornithologist Derek Onley, listening to the myriad birdcalls at Orokonui Ecosanctuary, reflects on the origins of the birds and how they arrived there.
Jupiter had just risen over Mopanui, but over Mihiwaka, the lights of Dunedin reflected off the lowering cloud like an unseasonal aurora.
Down the valley a couple of kaka called.
Something disturbed the pair of paradise ducks by the fire pond and they flew up yelping and groaning.
A little owl called in the car park where it was hunting the first hatching of paddock porina moths attracted to the light.
Up in the dark sky a lark started to sing, drifted over from the sheep paddocks and landed on the mown grass somewhere close to the skinks and tuatara.
It was 5.35am in late October. At 5.38 a blackbird sang.
The first tui called at 5.44, the first song thrush at 5.46 and by six, so many bellbirds and silvereyes were yelling from every bush that I gave up trying to sort out the different species, though I did notice that the more urbane sparrows and welcome swallows around the visitor centre were the last to rise.
The birds I heard that morning had ended up at Orokonui in very different ways. Kaka, of course, have been in New Zealand for millennia.
Narrowly escaping extinction, unlike their Norfolk Island cousin, they had to be re-introduced.
Paradise ducks, unlike kaka, needed no help and are doing very well in our agricultural country.
So well, in fact, that many people are surprised to hear they are endemic.
The duck equivalent of tui and bellbird, putakitaki live only in New Zealand and have done so for a long time.
Skylarks, in contrast, have been here for only 150 years.
It is usually said that British birds such as skylarks were introduced as a result of the early European settlers' romantic longing for the old country and the songs of birds, something that was noticeably lacking, due in no small part to the rapid clearance of bush around settlements.
Wordsworth's poem, To a Skylark, and the modern ''traditional'' Irish folk song The Lark in the Clear Air, probably reinforced this idea among the literary upper classes.
Most of the settlers were, however, farmers and shopkeepers, working-class people looking for a better life.
Where they came from, bird-catcher was a common rural occupation.
Skylarks were caught in their thousands.
Males were sold as cagebirds for their song and the females were sent to the poulterers.
More practical reasons may have prompted the importation of many a thrush and finch.
If you couldn't eat them then you could make a buck out of selling them as cagebirds.
Practical reasons certainly dictated the introduction of little owls.
By the early 1900s, small birds, introduced ones no less, were playing havoc with crops and in an early example of biological control, little owls were introduced to eat them, the old occupation of bird-catcher having never really caught on here.
And finally, there are the birds that have recently made it here on their own.
Silvereyes arrived from Australia in the mid-1800s and found the newly deforested island to their liking.
The late-rising welcome swallows were one of the last to arrive.
Crossing the Tasman in the 1950s and '60s, they now commonly nest throughout the country in barns, sheds, under bridges, porches and the Orokonui visitor centre.
New Zealanders have diverse attitudes to introduced organisms.
Generally, plants and mammals, except of course the likes of maize and cattle, are considered pests. Gorse, rats and possums are fair game.
Magpies are accused of decimating native bird populations, but, generally speaking, introduced birds are tolerated, if not happily enticed on to garden bird tables.
What, then, should we make of the scene in autumn inside the lower gate of the ecosanctuary, where dozens of blackbirds, thrushes and starlings were gorging themselves on the heavily fruiting native shrubs, in direct competition with a single pair of saddleback (tieke)?
-Derek Onley is a local ornithologist, illustrator and writer and organiser of bird counts in the Orokonui Ecosantuary. He is revising the Field Guide to New Zealand Birds with Hugh Robertson.
Birds of a feather
49 species of birds have been recorded in Orokonui Ecosanctuary.
•17 are endemic (occur only in New Zealand), of which five have been re-introduced.
•15 are native (occur in New Zealand and elsewhere), of which four are recent arrivals.
•17 are exotic. Two were introduced from Australia, one from North America and the rest from Europe.
