Did you know possums eat kea?
New evidence shows possums are eating New Zealand's native parrot the kea.
Nest-cameras for the first time show what happens inside kea nests invaded by stoats and possums in South Westland.
Possums eat parrots video on YouTube
Large numbers of kea nests are failing in the wild but it is only now that camera equipment has been able to reveal what's going on.
At a monitored site in South Westland, midway through the 2010 breeding season, researchers discovered three out of 11 nests under surveillance had been devastated by stoats and possums, with a loss of six chicks.
Possum caught eating a young kea in Ōkārito Forest
Possums have previously been filmed killing an adult kaka but until now we were completely unaware of their direct impact on kea nests. This constitutes a huge risk to our lowland populations as nearly all of our nests are being visited by possums.
Prolonged stoat attack on kea chicks
The research has also shown how long it takes chicks to die during a prolonged attack by stoats. One attack lasted two and a half hours with the stoat remaining in the recesses of the nest hole and repeating its assault on the two dying chicks.
One chick died at the end of the torment but the other lived for 40-hours with its injuries before disappearing. The mother was also injured.
Work of kea research team
The kea research team is monitoring nests in the Ōkarito Forest and in the area from the Copland Valley to the Paringa River, south of Fox Glacier. These areas are steep and thickly forested making it difficult to track wild kea and carry camera equipment and large batteries around in.
The research team are also monitoring trees for signs of excessive fruiting which would trigger a chain of events starting with a rat plague and ending with a plague of stoats.
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