Ruru vs waxeye
I’ve always had suspicions that there was a ruru (or two) living in the trees at the back of my home. I have often heard alarm calling from other birds, which usually signals either a cat or a bird of prey in the area. A couple of days ago I heard very frantic alarm calling from a group of blackbirds, I knew immediately that something was going down and I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to potentially see a ruru in the daylight.
Needless to say I found the ruru! He was hunched over and moving around quite a lot, usually when I’ve seen ruru in the wild they stay motionless to avoid getting noticed so this struck me as unusual. I slowly crept around so I could get a good view of the bird and luckily I didn’t spook him, I quickly realised what he had in his grasp was an unlucky little tauhou (waxeye). The ruru was furiously plucking the feathers from the tauhou and kept checking on me every few seconds to see if I was getting closer, once he realised I wasn’t moving he continued on with his business and I sat on the ground, camera on knees for stability and filmed this incredible act of nature unfold.
A ruru (morepork) feasting on a waxeye, edited down to under a minute, the whole event took around 15 minutes from start to finish.