Mohua Fact File

• The birds prefer to feed high in the trees although they will feed on the ground.
• While the female is in sole charge of the lengthy process of incubation, after the chicks hatch both parents spend a comparatively long period of time caring for the chicks.
• As with virtually all of New Zealand's threatened birds, habitat destruction has been a major cause of decline and many of our forests are still threatened with either clearfelling or modification by selective logging.
• Although the majority of forests where the mohua live are protected, even within these areas populations are still declining due to predation, forest browsing by possums and deer and competition with introduced birds.
• The introduced vespulid wasp also competes with mohua for insects and honeydew and the wasp may have contributed to the bird's disappearance from beech honeydew forests in the northern South Island.