The Southern falcon is found in Fiordland, Stewart Island and the Auckland Islands of New Zealand. It is threatened and listed as vulnerable.
The falcons don’t build nests but rather makes a scrape on the ground, under a rocky outcrop or in an epiphyte in an emergent forest tree into which it lays its eggs. This appears to be one of the reasons it’s numbers have declined as their ground nesting habit makes the eggs and young vulnerable to predation by cats, stoats, rats and hedgehogs. Though more research is needed, it appears that the adults cant defend the nest as well as previously thought. They are also impacted by the usual loss of habitat and shooting by farmers.
I was very much hoping to see one of these and as luck would have it, there was one right by the car as we parked at Mount Cook. I was quite thankful that it took as ages to find a car spot and this was the only one we could find. I liked this image as the falcon is framed by the snowy mountains of Mount Cook.
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