Tui hooligans
The recent flap (no pun intended) over noisy tui may seem like a typical silly season non-story, but believe me, it's a real problem. I live above a major central city intersection, and people sometimes ask whether I'm disturbed by road noise. "No," I say, "but those bloody birds wake me up at 5 in the morning!" A small patch of harakeke eight floors down is enough to attract hordes of juvenile tui flitting around and chattering and generally carrying on like kids in Manners Mall. Tsk tsk, youth today!
It's probably just the morning-averse urbocentric biophobic grump in me, but does anyone else notice it? And what is the best collective noun for tui? A disturbance? A larrikin? A raucous?
And what is the best collective noun for tui?
By all accounts it's an ecstasy of tui
We had a juvenile tui in Thorndon for the last 6 weeks or so, repetitively hammering the one note 4 or 5 times in a row, every couple of minutes. Oddly I noticed in the weekend it had gone, just in time for this to hit the news.
Tom, really you’ve gone too far this time, attacking crappy developers and bar staff that cant mix drinks is one thing but baby Tui is beyond the pale. Did anyone say Gannet on a stick?
I live in Wilton the land of Sun and Tui's and I don't have a problem with them, in fact I love those little bastards. Them and their testicles.
Somebody has to break out the Jay-Z quote right? If you've got bird problems, I feel bad for you son...
I cannot believe people have been ringing up the the council etc about this. This is worse than people who move to the inner city and complain about the bands.
it's amusing the story appeared in the herald today, after my blog post yesterday:
http://coffee.geek.nz/2008/01/07/awful_tune_local_tui_sings_over_and_over.html
If it makes any of the tui-haters feel any better, my cat dragged one in a few months ago. I was appallled at the time but at least the young tui in question must have been particularly stupid and his tail feathers now adorn my dreamcatcher.
it never ceases to amaze me that people will complain about tuis, but put up with car alarms....
So it turns out the Tui's are singing despite being affected by unusually high rates of cancer. Happy with yourselves, tui-haters?
In the game version of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, there was a section where you had to survive a recital of Vogon Poetry. It took me ages to get through that part.
I tried "block ears", "shout loudly", "ignore poetry" and many others. Nothing worked and I'd always die by the third stanza. Finally I tried "enjoy poetry" and it worked.
Maybe the people with troublesome tui's outside their windows could find away to enjoy the birdsong. It's like the game said: I remember the game said: "worse things have happened at sea (and at school, for that matter)".
surely its a hui of tui ?
send them round to my place - i'd love to have them here....
A hui of tui.
YES!
I used to live very close to Cornwall Park, in Auckland, where there are lots of puriri trees and other vegetation that attract them. It seemed as though tuis would wake you at dawn six months of the year. And if it wasn't tuis, it would be rosellas.
If you read accounts of the early Pakeha settlement of New Zealand, a consistent theme is the inability to sleep owing to birdsong. That's the real reason we have stoats you know.
Personally I sleep with earplugs, and the little white-ruffed bastards can scream all they like.