Search on for rooks in Southland
Posted on Wednesday, 14 September 2011 08:48 a.m.
Somewhere in Southland, a lonely rook is circling, calling for a mate and searching for a place to live.
The rook is hoping that he will attract a female by building a comfortable nest and broadcasting his availability with his strident cawing. But does he know that by advertising his presence, he runs the risk of capture or death?
This may sound like the plot of a Pixar movie, but in reality the bird is not the hero of this story and if the lonely rook does manage to attract a mate and breed, he will become a nuisance to farmers that could take years and plenty of money to eradicate.
That’s a scenario that Environment Southland Biosecurity Officer Tim Riding is keen to avoid.
Rooks are a pest species that have never been widely established in Southland, due to the vigilance of the Council’s biosecurity staff acting on prompt reporting from farmers, who are equally anxious not to have their crops devastated by large flocks of the aggressive black birds.
Rooks are known to be intelligent and wary. Botched attempts to clear nests will result in the birds abandoning their rookery and moving elsewhere, so control is always done by professional contractors to ensure that there are no survivors.
In recent years small numbers of rooks were known to be living in Eastern Southland, particularly around Kaiwera, but Tim Riding says that their current whereabouts are unknown. There have been unconfirmed reports of the distinctive “Caw! Caw!” being heard around Te Anau, and he himself heard a single bird in the Otatara Bush last week but wasn’t able to locate its nest before it went silent.
“There are possibly only a dozen rooks left in Southland and it’s quite possible that they’re all males but we don’t know and it would only take one or two females for numbers to build up again.
“We need to track them down before they get established in a new location, so if anyone thinks they have heard or seen a rook anywhere in Southland, please let us know.”
Contact Environment Southland on 0800 76 88 45 to report possible rook sightings or sounds.
Environment Southland is the brand name of Southland Regional Council.