Facts about stitchbird/hihi

Male stitchbird/hihi singing

How to recognise hihi

Male and female hihi look quite different.  He flaunts a flashy plumage of black head with white ‘ear’ tufts, bright yellow shoulder bars and breast bands and a white wing bar and has a mottled tan-grey-brown body.

She is more subdued with an olive-grey-brown body cover, white wing bars and small white ‘ear’ tufts.  They both have small cat-like whiskers around the beak and large bright eyes.

Hihi can be recognised by their posture of an upward tilted tail and strident call from which the name ‘stitchbird’ derives.  A 19th century ornithologist Sir Walter Buller described the call made by the male hihi as resembling the word ‘stitch’.  This call sounds a little like two stones being repeatedly stuck together.  Both males and females also have a range of warble-like calls and whistles.

Unique characteristics

Unlike most other birds, hihi build their nests in tree cavities.  The nest is complex with a stick base topped with a nest cup of finer twigs and lined with fern scales, lichen and spider web.

Hihi have a diverse and unusual mating system.  A female may breed with a single male or with several.  These arrangements can make determining the parentage of chicks a challenge.  Hihi are also the only birds known to sometimes mate face to face.

Hihi research

An active research programme with Massey and Auckland universities, as well as other institutes, has greatly increased our knowledge of hihi biology.

Hihi have been found to have a fascinating and complex mating system.  Males pair up with a female in their territory while also seeking to mate with other females in the neighbourhood.  To ensure the chicks are his, males need to produce large amounts of sperm to dilute that of other males.  And to avoid wasting this, the male has to assess exactly when a female is ready to breed.  In the days leading up to laying, when a female is weighed down with developing eggs, a number of males may chase her for hours at a time, all attempting to mate with her.

Research has also resulted in developing techniques for managing nesting behaviour, for example, managing nest mites, cross fostering and sexing of chicks and habitat suitability.

Management of the captive population at the Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre in eastern Wairarapa has also contributed to understanding the role of avian diseases in managing hihi populations.  Diseases such as Aspergillosis, a fungal infection of the respiratory tract, and Coccidiosis, an intestinal parasite, have been found to affect wild hihi survivial.

Current research programmes include developing a technique to measure the size of the Little Barrier hihi population and assess its health and viability.  Another study, on Tiritiri Matangi, is looking at the effect of carotenoid availability on hihi health (carotenoids are used for the yellow colour in male hihi feathers and egg yolk, and are important for health). 

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