A noiseless and nocturnal shadow in the forest — Written by Te Korowai o Waiheke Team Member

The depths of a tall forest gully can feel like you’re in a remote and untouched part of the world, especially when you can no longer get a signal on your GPS. Thick twists of supplejack now block my path forward, so I relent to find another way around the thicket. A noiseless shadow swoops past me, few creatures move with such ease and invisibility, so I am enamoured to see the golden eyes of a ruru peering down from the underside of a wheki ponga.

I’m surprised to see him out during the day, just as he seems surprised to see me stomping around in his little corner of the ngahere (forest).

While ruru have those big bright eyes, it’s their exceptional hearing that they rely on most for hunting at night time. Ruru like to make their nests in tree cavities, epiphytes or anywhere dark that they can hide away. While mum sits on her clutch of small white eggs, dad will ferry food back and forth to her. Ruru are not fussy when it comes to dinner time. Depending on the season and prey availability, they have a whole range of small animals to choose from, including other birds, mice, lizards, huhu beetles and wētā. The indigestible parts are regurgitated in the form of hard pellets, which when dissected will give you a fascinating insight into the bird’s diet.

Throughout Aotearoa, ruru are the silent hunters of the bush thanks to their soft, fringed wing tips. This helps not only with sneaking up on their prey, but with hearing them as they scuttle along the forest floor. Ruru are nocturnal, so memorising their perches and any obstacles within their home territories make flying around in the dark even more efficient. At night, their haunting calls fill the air. Two ruru echo their names back to each other, the gentle ‘morepork’ sound washing through the valley, occasionally broken by the rattle of a call affectionately described to me once as the ‘squeaky wheelbarrow’. The ruru in the ponga above me has closed his eyes and settled in to wait for night to fall, I manage to step quietly through the supplejack and up the otherside of the valley. The sudden sound of cars on the ridge remind me that I’m not so far away from civilisation, or rather that we are lucky enough to be living so close to this haven for wildlife.

— Written and captured by Te Korowai o Waiheke Team Member, Charlie Thomas.

Ruru, captured by Charlie Thomas