A pair of titipounamu (riflemen) and their four just-hatched chicks have made a home inside a possum trap on Otago Peninsula.
Titipounamu are the smallest of New Zealand’s native birds, weighing in at about 6g — less than the weight of a $1 coin.
The nest was spotted two weeks ago by a member of the Otago Peninsula Biodiversity Group, a volunteer service working to eradicate possums in the area.
At the time, the trap was live.
Community engagement team leader Marcia Dale said she was able to deactivate the trap, despite loud protestations from the resident bird couple.
‘‘I can’t work out if this particular pair is really smart, or really dumb,’’ she said.
The volunteers had since made some modifications to protect the nest from the birds’ mortal enemies, possums, by taping up the entrance hole and setting cage traps for predators near the tree.
The birds would have likely been in there for about five weeks, the nest-building would have taken several weeks and the incubation process about three weeks, Mrs Dale said.
Titipounamu required holes to nest in rather than being out in the open.
Mrs Dale said the lack of old forest made such spots hard to find, hence the likely attraction of the possum trap.
‘‘The birds are having a housing crisis, just like we are.’’
That said, there was a perfectly good nest box only 50m away.
Nest boxes had been scattered around the peninsula by volunteers in an effort to provide safe homes for the titipounamu population.
The Otago Peninsula Biodiversity Group’s monitoring over the past decade had shown titipounamu numbers were decreasing.
However, the use of nest boxes was providing some hope and had seen an increase from 19 inhabited boxes last year to 42 this year.
The main reasons for titipounamu decline were lack of safe nesting spots and predation.
The group had also eradicated more than 20,820 possums so far.
It would be about three weeks before the chicks had developed enough to fly, and the family would move from its safe haven then, Mrs Dale said.
