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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast

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Speaker 1: from News Talks at Me.

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Speaker 2: It was Rude Cliin Past, good old friend of the show,

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Speaker 2: our man in the garden, Rude Kliin Past, who inspired

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Speaker 2: me ever since my fiasco with the trees in my backyard,

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Speaker 2: in which I inadvertently oversaw a much much much more

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Speaker 2: aggressive winter prune than intended, and which, for the sake

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Speaker 2: of marital harmony, we need not re litigate this morning,

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Speaker 2: I've been looking for opportunities to make amends to mother

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Speaker 2: Nature at my place, along with my regularly nuttallied rat trap.

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Speaker 2: Rude suggested that what the native birds had lost in

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Speaker 2: terms of a leafy canopy at my place, I might

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Speaker 2: make up to them with a bit of sugar water.

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Speaker 2: Native birds, it would seem, are kind of like school children,

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Speaker 2: or honestly kind of like me, and that the quickest

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Speaker 2: way to their hearts is through their stomachs, and the

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Speaker 2: more sugary the incentive, the better. So I bought one

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Speaker 2: from Predator Free New Zealand, a peckapecker bird feeder with

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Speaker 2: a dripper bottle up the top for the neck defeeders

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Speaker 2: and a little attachment for hanging energy balls or bits

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Speaker 2: of fruit underneath it. Winter is the time when the

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Speaker 2: native birds benefit the most from a bit of supplementary feed,

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Speaker 2: and so, you know, putting a bit of food in

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Speaker 2: the feeder was obvious. I reckon that would probably please

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Speaker 2: the sparrows. But it wasn't at all clear to me

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Speaker 2: how the native neck defeeders were going to work out

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Speaker 2: that the bottle was dripping out the Avian version of fanta.

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Speaker 3: It was that sweet. I had no idea. You know,

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Speaker 3: there's like a little metal attachment, a little metal nozzle.

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Speaker 3: How would they know that was the place to go?

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Speaker 3: So I spent a day or two googling various theories

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Speaker 3: and methods for attracting them before the bottle arrived. Although

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Speaker 3: as it turned out, I needn't worried. The moment I

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Speaker 3: strung it up and turned my back on the feeder,

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Speaker 3: it was swarmed by an incredible flock of toho, you know,

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Speaker 3: silver eyes. The pudgy little cuties swarmed the feeders platform

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Speaker 3: and pecked at the feeder nozzle, six or eight at

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Speaker 3: a time. They squabble, with more queuing up in the

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Speaker 3: nearby plum tree, waiting to gorge in the few weeks

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Speaker 3: that I've had it, I've become less concerned about attracting

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Speaker 3: birds and more worried that somehow I've created a dependency.

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Speaker 3: As well as the silver eyes, every Twi in Auckland

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Speaker 3: must have had the word. They swoop down, irridescent, gorgeous, greedy,

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Speaker 3: the toho scramble. I've no idea what the record is,

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Speaker 3: and I don't know. Maybe you can outdo me. But

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Speaker 3: at one point yesterday I counted no fewer than six

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Speaker 3: Twoi in my backyard, six all of them lined up

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Speaker 3: to guzz down the sugar water. It's a good thing

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Speaker 3: that Toui don't have teeth to brush, But can too

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Speaker 3: he get diabetes. Maybe it's middle age. I don't know,

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Speaker 3: Maybe it's maybe it's a weird form of nesting. I

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Speaker 3: just cannot believe what joy it's giving me to sit

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Speaker 3: down and watch the native birds squabbling over sugar water,

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Speaker 3: the toho, the silver eyes like furry little ping pong balls.

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Speaker 3: The Toui bullies, but such beautiful bullies. My feeder is

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Speaker 3: not bringing back a dense tree canopy to my backyard,

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Speaker 3: but it has certainly brought back a bit of life.

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Speaker 1: For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live

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Speaker 1: to news talks he'd be from nine am Saturday, or

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