Christmas eve ruru spotting at Zealandia

I still can’t believe my luck with this special bird encounter. I stumbled upon a whole family of ruru / moreporks at Zealandia on Christmas Eve and I’m still buzzing from it weeks later.

Up until this experience I had never even seen a ruru fledgling, so when I first spotted this one it was just surreal. This is a bird experience I’m not going to forget, ever.

Ruru are a bit of an enigma, they’re nocturnal and expertly hide amongst foliage during the day, they’re also mostly silent so they’re incredibly hard to spot.

Since ruru are birds of prey, other bird species are very wary of them, if they notice a ruru they will gather together and alarm call furiously trying to be intimidating. Usually if you’re walking in the forest and hear a commotion of multiple species of birds it’ll be because there’s a bird of prey lurking somewhere nearby.

I happened to be in the right place at the right time to hear such a commotion, which lead me to this family. First I spotted an adult, in a tree trunk at eye level, then I looked up and saw the fluffy silhouette of a ruru fledgling.

The parent was relaxed and calm, so I stayed and watched them for a while, conscious that my presence could cause stress to a protective parent. I kept a safe distance from the family and once a parent flew to a further away perch to evade a dive bombing tūī I moved to a spot where I could film the fledgling. I was incredibly happy to get some footage of the fledgling doing a funky ruru dance too which was such a bonus!

Believe it or not after I left this family I found another one a couple of hours into my walk, talk about going from zero to hero! I hope I haven’t used up all my ruru luck, in one day because I love hanging out with these birds and I hope it’s not too long before I get to see a family of them again.