For the most part he left them alone, monitoring them only from a distance and via a motion-activated camera. However, when he noticed two of them frequently disappearing into a hollow tree trunk, he couldn’t resist a peek.
There, in the bottom of what turned out to be quite a deep cavity, were somewhere between five and seven chicks, but it was too hard to count how many were actually in the wobbly huddle.
Benney made a short video to record his find and was happy to share it with the Northern Advocate, with readers having shown plenty of interest when the discovery of the adult birds was publicised earlier this month.
A little blurry to begin with, the footage then comes into focus and the baby birds are clearly visible - “big and healthy” and starting to get their colourful adult plumage, Benney said.
From advice he’d received and his own research, Benney deduced the chicks were about 3 weeks old and would be ready to fledge in another three to five weeks.
Both parents had been doing a “absolutely brilliantly” taking care of their brood - that shared responsibility being another special trait of kākāriki, Benney said.
There was no guarantee any of the chicks would remain in the area after they fledged but they were likely to hang about as long as the bush remained predator-free.
Conservationist Ethan Benney says the return of kākāriki to a block of native bush on his family's farm is "a really big deal". Photo / Michael Cunningham
Kākā and bellbirds had returned to the bush some time ago, but the use of it by the rare kākāriki was really special, Benney said. He thought they might be from a flock of 40 that was relocated from Hauturu (Little Barrier Island) to the pest-free Moturua Island, near Russell, in 2017 as part of Project Island Song.
The arrival of the birds at his family’s farm bush block meant not only that his years of hard work had paid off, but was an indication he and other conservationists were “going in the right direction in Northland and just need to keep it up”, Benney said.
To maintain the predator-free status of his sanctuary, Benney laid and regularly checked 120 traps, renewed rat bait weekly, and regularly shot larger predators, including possums, stoats and feral cats.
One of three adult kākāriki Ethan Benney recently noticed in an eco-sanctuary he's spent the past 15 years creating. Photo / Michael Cunningham
There are three types of kākāriki native to NZ and many of its offshore islands - the orange-fronted, yellow-crowned, and red-crowned species.
As their name suggests, all kākāriki (meaning green in Māori) mainly have green plumage. The red-crowned variety has a crimson forehead, fore-crown and patches behind the eyes and on each flank at the base of the tail. The leading edge of the primary wing feathers are a rich cyan blue.
Common on some offshore islands, kākāriki are almost entirely absent from mainland New Zealand.
