Thread: Nelson Lakes getting the Green rain over 33000ha in July...better get into it.

Originally Posted by sore head stoat

Wrong. See distribution and habitat, second paragraph where kea nest.
Kea | New Zealand Birds Online

Tell rock wren that stoats dont eat there nests. Now they live above the bushline and nest above the bush line.

Rock wren | New Zealand Birds Online

I know a guy that traps up in Arthurs Pass and he was telling me a few months ago the last stoat he caught was right in the sub alpine scrub. It is also thought that invasion of valleys can occur when stoats come right over the tops not only up the valley floors.

Not wrong, just the link doesn't list all the places they nest or explain how the cock bird guards the nest from predators. Annual mortality 36.8 % in the days prior to 1080. All the Kea on our farm when at Murchison were poisoned with 1080 - a group of about 12 birds that had been stable at that number for 20 years. There was one Kea sighted when I visited the old farm in 2019 and that is 15 years after the poison drop.
My Uncle shot and trapped hundreds of Kea in the upper Waimakariri in the 1960's with call and decoy birds for the bounty. Flocks of 20 - 30 were common and self sustaining despite culling. The official figures on Kea beaks (bounty) are local council figures but don't include private bounties paid. So 1080 kills a lot of bigger birds, Kea, Pigeons, Moreporks. Many pellets get hung up in trees where birds eat them without ground foraging.
The forest has improved remarkably with possums gone, but is silent.
Ask Dick Deaker about the Kea populations in Fiordland, comparing poisoned to un-poisoned valleys. It is a sad story