Tui chick hailed as Halo project success

A tui chick rescued and rehabilitated as part of a conservation programme aimed at bringing native birds back to Hamilton has been spotted close to where it was released and looking healthy.

The discovery has been hailed as exciting news for Waikato Regional Council's Hamilton Halo project, which is attempting to increase the survival rate of tui chicks at key breeding sites in the city.

The tui was one of three chicks rescued after being thrown from their nest in Glenview in November last year.

Therese Balvert, a biodiversity officer at the council, said it was an exciting discovery.''It's great news that at least one of these birds has survived and is doing well. It's also encouraging that this tui has apparently stayed local to where it was released.''

Bird rescue expert Bill Smith reared the trio at his home in Taupiri before they were released in December last year.

Last week, Waikato Regional Council received a photo of a banded tui in Fitzroy and were able to identify it was one of the rescued birds.

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Rare bald eagles nesting in Hamilton

 Two rare bald eagles have made Hamilton their home after facing near extinction for decades.

The eagles first nested in Cootes Paradise at the Royal Botanical Gardens in 2009 and have nested every summer since, although they have yet to lay any eggs.

“Hopefully one day soon they’ll have young,” Tys Theysmeyer, head of natural lands at the RBG, said.

“The first two years they were too young. The last two years are a little more puzzling. If they don’t have any young next year then we must have an issue with their ability to reproduce, which is entirely possible.”

Theysmeyer pointed to pollution as a likely factor affecting the birds’ reproduction — it wouldn’t be the first time. Decades ago, the pesticide DDT leached through the food chain, causing egg shell softness and whittled down the eagle population to all but four active nests in all of the Great Lakes by the early 1980s.

With stricter restrictions on pesticide use, the eagle population slowly began to recover. Today, there is a growing, healthy population of the eagles, with more than 60 nests across the Great Lakes and the numbers are increasing every year, according to Theysmeyer.

Continued:  http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/2012/10/21/hamilton-bald-eagles-nesting.html