Tūī

The tūī is a beautiful songbird found only in New Zealand. From a distance it can look plain and dark, but in the sunshine its feathers shimmer with green, blue and bronze. Its most famous feature is the little curly tuft of white feathers at its throat, which bobs about as the bird sings and looks a bit like a tiny bow tie.

Tūī belong to a group of birds called honeyeaters, and their favourite food is nectar, the sweet juice deep inside flowers. They twist and dangle to reach into blossoms of native plants such as flax and kōwhai, and while they sip they carry pollen from flower to flower. This makes the tūī a very important pollinator, helping New Zealand’s plants make new seeds. They also enjoy fruit and insects.

One of the most delightful things about tūī is how they sing. They are wonderful mimics who can copy the calls of other birds like the bellbird, and they will even imitate everyday sounds such as phone ringtones. Long ago, Māori sometimes trained tūī to repeat spoken words, just like a clever talking pet.

Here is a funny fact: the nectar inside flax flowers can sometimes ferment. When a tūī drinks a lot of it, the bird may fly about in a wobbly, tipsy-looking way before shaking it off. It is one of the many things that make watching tūī such a joy.

Happily, the tūī is not threatened, and it can be found across the North, South and Stewart Islands. Where people look after native forest and keep introduced predators under control, tūī can become common again, filling the trees with their bubbling, clicking, musical song.