With Thanks to the Kereru

The moral of this story is to follow the birds at Struan Farm. Especially the kereru, our native wood pigeons.

One day this past week John sat down in the living room to watch the midday news before lunch and kept seeing a large number of kereru flying into and out of the large kahikatea and rimu trees on the point in front of our house. We both wondered why they were being drawn to these trees in such numbers.

I thought that maybe the kahikatea had started to fruit, and suggested that he wander over after lunch to check it out. He came back seriously excited: turns out that yes, the kahikatea was fruiting, but more importantly, the rimu is a female starting to fruit! Here we've been wandering around the farm for about two weeks now trying to find a female rimu with no luck. The kererus decided to help these hapless humans out, telling us we were a bit too early in our search and delivering one to us.

John is now busy building a fence around the trees to keep the sheep out and also clearing some of the ground below to make it more hospitable for seedling trees. We're hoping we'll be able to grow rimus for planting around the property along with totara, kahikatea, miro and matai, fingers crossed. 

And guess what? More good news. I took some gardening waste to the compost bins the next day and examined the old rimu that hangs over the entrance to the QEII bush reserve in the back: another female! So John is clearing underneath this tree too.