White-faced heron nesting

A white-faced heron chick. A difficult photo shot because of the
height above the ground and many branches. Photo by Owen Cole

In the old pines just west of Sexton Road and tucked in behind Rototuna Primary School a pair of white-faced herons have been nesting for the last few years. This year we took more interest in recording and observing them. They raised one chick to fledge. Other years they have had two. Old mature pine trees are an ideal nesting tree for them with lots of horizonal branches which to build their very unstructured nest of sticks. The height above the ground made observing and photographing difficult. This same height gives them a certain amount of protection from rats and possums (no pest control here) particularly in pine trees which have no appeal to either of the pests as a tree food source, but there are other threats. There was an observation in another area of a harrier hawk attacking and eating the contents of a white-faced heron nest. There was much commotion by the parents but to no avail.