It was Ruud Kleinpaste who inspired me.  

Even since my fiasco with the trees in my backyard, in which I inadvertently oversaw a much, much, much more aggressive winter prune than intended, (and which for the sake of marital harmony we need not re-litigate!), I’ve been looking for opportunities to make amends to Mother Nature. 

Along with my regularly Nutella’d rat trap, Ruud suggested that what the native birds had lost in terms of a leafy canopy, I might make up to them with a bit of sugar water. Native birds, it would seem, are like school children (or indeed, me). The quickest way to their hearts is through their stomachs and the more sugary the incentive, the better.  

I bought one from Predator Free NZ: a Pekapeka bird feeder with a dripper bottle up the top for the nectar feeders and a little attachment for hanging energy balls or fruit underneath it. 

Winter is the time when the native birds benefit most from a bit of supplementary feed. Putting a bit of food in the feeder was obvious. That would please the sparrows. But it wasn’t at all clear to me how the native nectar feeders might work out that the bottle was dripping out the avian version of Fanta.  

I spent a day or two Googling various theories and methods for attracting them before the bottle arrived, but as it turned out I needn’t have worried. The moment I strung it up and turned my back on the feeder, it was swarmed by an incredible flock of tauhou, silvereyes. The pudgy little cuties swarmed the feeder’s platform and pecked at the feeder nozzle. Six or eight at a time they squabble, with more queueing up in the nearby plum tree, waiting to gorge. 

In the few weeks I’ve had it up, I’ve become less concerned about attracting birds, and more worried that somehow I’ve created a dependency. As well as the silvereyes, every tūī in Auckland must have had the word. They swoop down, iridescent, gorgeous, greedy. The tauhou scramble.  

I’ve no idea what the record is —maybe you can outdo me— but at one point yesterday I counted no fewer than six tūī in my backyard, all of them lined up to guzzle down the sugar water. It’s a good thing they don’t have teeth to brush, but can tūī get diabetes? 

Maybe it’s middle age. I dunno. Maybe it’s a weird form of nesting. I just cannot believe what joy it’s giving me to sit down and watch the native birds squabbling over sugar water. The tauhou, like furry little ping pong balls. The tūī, bullies, but such beautiful bullies.   

My feeder is not bringing back a dense tree canopy to my backyard. But it’s certainly brought back a bit of life.