Rifleman – Tītipounamu

Melissa Boardman, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Acanthisitta chloris granti

Rifleman are now extinct in the Tangihua ranges

The rifleman is generally considered to be New Zealands smallest bird with only three surviving populations in the Northland area Warawara Forest, Little Barrier and Tiritiri Matangi Islands.

Description

The photos are from Tiritiri Matangi male, female and chicks

Males are smaller than females and have a bright green on the head and back. Females are mainly yellow-brown with darker speckles on the head and back.
Both sexes have pale grey under-parts. The black bill is slender, pointed, and angled slightly upwards. Riflemen are very small birds with short wings and a very short tail

Riflemen are relatively poor flyers with limited dispersal capability. They typically move through the forest using short flights, mainly from canopy to canopy.

About Rifleman

Call

A short, simple, high frequency zip , pip or chuck produced by both sexes. The alarm call is a rapid high frequency decrescendo. Riflemen utter almost constant contact calls while foraging. Calls are produced at a high frequency often inaudible to people.

Nesting

Nest description Enclosed dome made predominantly of leaf skeletons and lined with feathers, situated within a cavity. Occasionally built without a cavity as an enclosed spherical nest on tree branches.
Incubation of the 2-5 eggs takes about 20 days, and chicks leave the nest when about 24 days old. Riflemen breed in cooperative family groups in both sub-species, where related offspring help to raise siblings from subsequent clutches. Unrelated helpers may also assist with breeding and are thought to gain pairing opportunities from helping.

Food

Riflemen are exclusively insectivorous, feeding on a large variety of small invertebrates, particularly beetles, spiders and moth species (both adults and caterpillars)
The majority of time is spent foraging for small insects in the canopy or on tree trunks; in the absence of introduced predators, riflemen also forage on the ground. They use a variety of foraging behaviours including probing beneath bark on the trunks of trees, gleaning from leaves and branches, and are infrequently seen to aerial forage

Recovery plan for Riflemen in the Tangihua ranges

Issue

Population declines and fragmentation of riflemen are considered likely to be related to habitat clearance initially, compounded by the impacts of introduced pest species, particularly stoats rats and possums which raid their nests

Action

Eradication of predators is the initial step followed by reintroducing the birds.