New Zealand Bellbird

The New Zealand Bellbird, known to Maori as korimako or makomako, is a medium-sized honeyeater found nowhere else on Earth. It is celebrated above all for its voice: a cascade of pure, liquid notes that struck early European visitors as the ringing of small bells. When Captain Cook's expedition anchored in Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770, the naturalist Joseph Banks famously described the dawn chorus drifting across the water as "like small bells most exquisitely tuned," and bellbirds were the leading voice in that chorus.

Together with the larger tui, the bellbird forms the backbone of New Zealand's native dawn chorus, and the two species are among the country's principal pollinators and seed dispersers for many native trees and shrubs. Though it disappeared from parts of the North Island during the 19th century, likely a casualty of introduced predators and disease, the bellbird remains common across the South Island, Stewart Island and many predator-free offshore islands, and it has been steadily recolonizing northern districts. Adaptable and bold, it takes readily to gardens, parks and plantations wherever nectar-rich flowers grow, making it one of the easiest native songbirds for visitors to meet.

The bellbird is a slim, active songbird that is far more often heard than clearly seen as it darts through dense foliage. Males and females differ noticeably in color, so knowing both plumages helps. Two features give it away even in a brief view: the glowing ruby-red eye of the adult and the fast, whirring flight, which produces an audible flutter of the wings as the bird crosses a clearing.

Male vs. female

The sexes are readily told apart with a clear view. The male is a handsome olive-green, richer and darker above than below, with a glossy blue-purple sheen that catches the light on the crown and face and a slightly forked, blackish tail. The female is plainer and browner, a more muted olive without the head gloss, and she shows a distinctive narrow stripe of pale creamy-white curving from the bill back across the cheek, a mark the male largely lacks. Both sexes share the striking ruby-red eye once adult. Females are also slightly smaller on average, though size alone is hard to judge in the field.

Juveniles

Young bellbirds resemble adult females but are duller and softer in tone, lacking any head gloss and often showing a faint yellowish wash on the face and a less distinct cheek stripe. A key difference is the eye: juveniles have a brown or dull reddish-brown eye rather than the vivid ruby-red of the adult, so eye color is a useful age clue at close range. Immature males gradually acquire the darker, glossier head plumage as they mature over their first year.

The song that names the bird is a sequence of clear, resonant chiming notes, pure and bell-like, delivered in short bursts that carry remarkably far through the forest. Bellbird song is highly variable between regions and even between neighboring individuals, and local "dialects" are well documented, so the chorus in one valley can sound noticeably different from another. Females sing too, which is unusual among songbirds and a subject of ongoing research into New Zealand's honeyeaters.

Beyond the musical phrases, bellbirds give a range of harsher sounds: scolding churrs, a rapid clicking or clacking alarm, and sharp tink notes. Song peaks at dawn, when numbers of birds sing together to produce the ringing chorus that so impressed early visitors, and there is often a second burst of song around dusk.

The New Zealand Bellbird is endemic to New Zealand and is widespread through most of the South Island, Stewart Island and a great many offshore and predator-free islands, from Poor Knights and Hen and Chickens in the north to the subantarctic Auckland Islands in the far south. It also occupies parts of the North Island, where it vanished from many districts in the 1860s and 1870s, a decline still not fully explained but likely tied to introduced predators, disease and habitat loss, and from which it has been slowly recovering and recolonizing.

Bellbirds occupy a broad range of wooded habitats: native forest and forest edge, regenerating scrub, exotic plantations and well-planted suburban gardens and parks, from sea level up into montane and subalpine forest. They are largely resident, though birds may make local seasonal movements to follow flowering and fruiting, and mainland "halo" effects around predator-controlled reserves such as Zealandia in Wellington have helped populations spill back into surrounding suburbs.

The bellbird has a mixed diet of nectar, insects and fruit, and its brush-tipped tongue is specially adapted for lapping nectar from flowers. Nectar from native trees and shrubs such as flax (harakeke), kowhai, fuchsia, rata, kohekohe and mistletoe is a favorite, and in feeding the birds pick up and carry pollen between blossoms, making bellbirds important pollinators of many native plants. They will also feed at introduced garden flowers and, readily, at sugar-water feeders.

Insects and spiders gleaned from foliage, bark and flowers supply essential protein, especially during the breeding season when adults are feeding fast-growing chicks. Bellbirds also eat honeydew, the sugary secretion produced by scale insects on beech trunks, and take soft native fruits in season, helping to disperse the seeds of shrubs and small trees through the forest.

Bellbirds breed mainly from September through January. The female builds a loosely woven cup of twigs, fine grasses, rootlets and other plant material, lining it with feathers and soft fibers, and places it well hidden in dense foliage, a shrub, a tangle of vines or a tree fork, usually within a few meters of the ground. Nest building is her work alone.

She lays three to four eggs, pinkish-white and finely spotted and blotched with reddish-brown, and incubates them herself for around two weeks while the male often feeds her at or near the nest. Both parents then feed the nestlings, which fledge roughly two weeks after hatching. Pairs may raise one or two broods in a season. Eggs, chicks and sitting females are highly vulnerable to introduced predators such as ship rats, stoats and cats, which is a major reason the species thrives best on predator-free islands and within fenced sanctuaries.

Bellbirds are among the easiest native New Zealand birds to enjoy, and you can both draw them to a garden and seek them out in the wild. On the mainland your best chances are near predator-controlled reserves and in the South Island; on many offshore islands they are abundant and confiding.

• Plant nectar-rich natives such as kowhai, flax (harakeke), fuchsia, rata, kaka beak and native mistletoe to provide the flowers bellbirds seek through the year.
• Offer a sugar-water feeder (roughly one part white sugar to five or six parts water, no honey or dyes) and keep it scrupulously clean to avoid disease.
• Visit or support predator-free sanctuaries like Zealandia (Wellington), Tiritiri Matangi, Kapiti Island and Ulva Island, where bellbirds are common and easy to see.
• Listen at dawn, when the bell-like chorus is strongest, and follow the ringing notes to locate birds feeding in flowering trees.
• Provide fresh water for drinking and bathing, and dense native shrubbery for cover and nesting.
• Keep cats indoors, especially at dawn and dusk, since predation is the single biggest threat to bellbirds on the mainland.

• Tui: Larger, glossy blue-black with a white throat tuft; shares the dawn chorus and nectar diet but has a noisier, more varied voice
• Silvereye: Much smaller with a bold white eye-ring and grey back, also feeds at flowers and sugar-water
• Grey Warbler: Tiny insect-eater with a long trilling song, often heard in the same forest as the bellbird