I woke up this morning to the gorgeous gargle of a tui getting liquored up in the ornamental cherry tree by our front door. It almost made up for the miserable weather, again. I love watching tui. They’re so hedonistic. Faced with a tree in full blossom, they behave worse than adolescents on alcopops, especially if you’ve got an early Taiwanese cherrry, Prunus campanulata. They drink themselves silly on its fluoro-pink blossoms; don’t be surprised to find them blotto on their backs, having fallen out of the branches.
Our tree’s a pale pink Japanese cherry but that doesn’t mean the tui are any more refined at our place. By the time I came downstairs and grabbed my camera to snap this photo, a second tui had arrived on the scene. Instead of sharing, the two birds immediately launched into a lout bout of beak-and-claw biffo. Tui are beautiful songbirds, but they’re also big bullies.
I have been trying for the last couple of weeks to get a photo of the tui in the Kowhai tree but cant get close enough, I was watching it the other morning and it goes from the Kowhai to one of the peach trees and then onto the Echicum bush, fasinating watching them, we also get them down the back section fighting in the flaxes when they are in flower, they come in at least 3 times a day, showed our 2 year old grand daughter the other morning and the look on her face was great to watch