Tūī

Tūī (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae)

Tūī, Lake Mapourika, New Zealand. Photo by Paul Stewart. Public domain CC0 via Flickr

Call

Tūī communication call (Source: Department of Conservation CC BY 4.0)

Tūī territorials call (Source: Department of Conservation CC BY 4.0)

Where is home?

Native forests, bush reserves, and scrub, travelling for flowering native trees. You can feed tūī in your own backyard with sugar-water feeders, and by planting a variety of flowering natives. 

How are they doing?

Not Threatened (Chatham Island subspecies is Threatened – Nationally Vulnerable)
Vulnerable to introduced predators.

What are they known for?

• Tūī are very vocal birds, and great mimics. They make a range of sounds, and copy the tunes of other manu and environmental noises. Part of their song is outside the range of human hearing.

• Tūī are part of the honeyeater family, and their beaks and long tongue are perfectly adapted to eat the nectar and honeydew of many native flowering and fruiting trees including kowhai, puriri, pohutukawa, flax, gums, kākā beak and rātā. This makes them a crucial pollinator for Aotearoa New Zealand forests. They also eat insects, and the fruit of several native trees, becoming efficient seed dispersers.

Tūī connections

• Me he korokoro tūī
  How eloquent he is | he has the  throat of a tūī

  This whakataukī acknowledges an excellent singer.

• E koekoe te kōkō, e ketekete te kākā, e kūkū te kererū
  The parson bird (tuī/kōkō) chatters, the parrot gabbles, the wood pigeon coos

  This whakataukī speaks to how, like the world of manu, our society is made up of all different kinds. Everybody has a voice which should be respected.