Koekoeā Quest - Looking for injured and dead long-tailed cuckoos

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Long-tailed cuckoos / koekoeā are returning. Often these birds come to grief hitting windows, and when they do I would love to get my hands on them.
I am working with DOC on a project investigating LTC movement (part of my PhD research), using satellite tags and genomics, and samples from injured or freshly dead koekoeā will be a valuable addition to the genomics work.

A little more info on this webpage where I hope to add updates once we start getting data: Koekoeā Quest

Injured koekoeā
If you find an injured koekoeā, please phone 0800 DOC HOT (0800 362 468), or contact your nearest DOC office or native bird rescue. Then, please let me know too so I can liaise with them.

Freshly-dead koekoeā
If you find a freshly-dead koekoeā, please put it in a plastic bag, freeze it, and contact me as soon as possible.

You can contact me either through the Manaaki Whenua website or by clicking under my profile (on the side of this post) for contact info.

If you can help to spread the word, please do!
Thanks

[Neil Fitzgerald]

If anyone has ways and interest in helping spread the word, please feel free to share.
Thank you!

Koekoea wanted poster2.jpg (591.76 KiB) Viewed 2338 times

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Some of my tagged long-tailed cuckoos have started moving north. Numbers will be dropping but I'm hoping to catch more this season and keen to hear if people are still hearing them in the usual places.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Northward migration is definitely underway, with three tagged birds taking advantage of the recent southerly breeze and leaving NZ last weekend and early this week. The first to leave is now in Bougainville, another is following a similar track, and the third appears to be heading for Tonga. All very exciting.

[Jim_j]

Cool.
Early days but does the tracking show that all the tagged birds do move up the country before heading across the sea?
What sort of timeframe is it taking them to cross the ocean?
Heard one on the Paparoa track last week.

Cheers
Jim

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Hi Jim,
The Bougainville bird was from Fiordland and it moved up to the southern Coromandel mid Feb. It appears to have taken around 85 hrs to reach land again. Another Fiordland bird moved to Northland about the same time (it has a different tag and we might have to wait for it to return to tell us where it's been). A couple of birds from Hauturu appear to be waiting in Northland, but another from the island, and one from Pureora, pretty much left directly. The Pureora bird took about 58 hrs to get to Ha'afeva, Tonga, where it might have landed about 10 am this morning.
Interesting that you are still hearing them. I just spent half a day at Pureura, where I know there is still at least one LTC, and I didn't hear a single call.
Thanks
Neil

[Jim_j]

Thanks Neil.
Great stuff - be very interesting to hear what else the tracking reveals - I wonder if birds move between the different island groups in their winter hang outs?
I only heard a single bird and a single call over the 3 days on the Paparoa.

Cheers
jim