The South Island Robin research reflection.

I started to do my research on Monday in preparation for my research reflection in ESOL.

I've looked at two websites to gather information about the South Island Robin, Notornis and Nzbirdsonline. I found out that the South Island Robin is a native bird in New Zealand with the size of a sparrow, they are 18 centimetres in length and 35 grams in weight. They have a few differences in their appearances by gender: the male robin is a dark-grey black over their head, neck, mantle and upper chest. Their flight feathers are brownish black.  Their lower chests and bellies' colour is white to yellow with a sharp differentiation between black and white on the chest part. Meanwhile, the females are light to grey in the upper body. Their bellies and chest area are smaller, having less distinction between grey and white feathering.
They use specific hunting methods at different times of the year. They use scanning, hawking (hunt on the wing for food) and flycatching (the method of catching flies) during late November and December. They use hawking and flycatching during January to mid-March and hawking during the late summer. During this part of the research, it was my first time encountering the words hawking and flycatching.
The robins live in mature forests, scrubs and exotic plantations. They also prefer moist areas with plants growing underneath forest canopies.
South Island Robins are monogamous, having only one partner in breeding. Their breeding seasons starts from July to March and they lay their eggs from July to December.
They are decreasing in population due to predators like rats, stoats and feral cats and loss of habitat. The robins have been tried to translocate where there are no predators, the translocation caused the inbreeding, cause problems to reproduction and have genetical consequences.