Seen through glass (double glazing to be accurate) - not darkly, but somewhat blurry. A commotion of little birds swept down into a karo tree near my window. Their little white eye rings meant that even I could identify them. I know them as wax-eyes, the Maori name is tauhou, and silvereye is the most used name for them. Their scientific name is Zosterops lateralis.
I had to photograph them through the window. This meant fuzzy pictures. Still, I haven’t been so close with a camera before, and this little portrait pleases me. Alas, they flitted away very quickly when they sensed me at the window.
They’re birds of the south-west Pacific, apparently ”self-introduced” to New Zealand - not a native bird, but treated as one. So how did such small birds (a bit smaller than sparrows) manage to get here across the ocean? They migrate over long distances in Australia and it’s thought that they may have been swept along in our direction by stormy winds in the 1800’s. They were first described here in 1832.
So their Maori name refers to this - I have read that tauhou means “stranger” or “new arrival.”
Like us, they’re omnivores. They’ll eat insects, berries, nectar, and - one thing that can make them unpopular with humans - fruit. So they’re little helpers for gardeners when it comes to their taste for aphids, but apparently for some growers they’re little pests who feast on their fruit. I haven’t noticed this on our fruit trees (blackbirds are another thing!) - for me it’s all pleasure when I see little gangs of wax-eyes come visiting.