Beech trees use photosynthesis to capture energy from the sun

Eat to Live

Everything that we do - moving, growing, talking, even sleeping - requires energy. Humans and all other plants and animals get the energy they need to live by eating food.

Plants are unique because they can make their own food through a process called photosynthesis. Their green leaves have special chemicals that help them turn sunlight, air and water into food.

Animals, on the other hand, can't make their own food and so they have to eat other plants or animals for energy.

Caterpillars are herbivores

Some animals, called herbivores, eat only plants, while carnivores eat only animals.

Most humans are omnivores because they will eat both plants and animals.

What foods do tui like to eat?

Kaka are omnivores

The tui is one of three bird species in New Zealand called honeyeaters. (The other honeyeaters are the stitchbird and the bellbird). They are named this because one of their favourite foods is flower nectar, which is sweet and runny like honey!

Honeyeaters have a long bill and a specially adapted tongue that looks like a brush to help them collect the nectar.

Many native trees flower in winter and early spring, and so tui can go from one plant to the other feeding on flowers during this time of year. Some of their favourite flowers are kohekohe, fivefinger, haikaro, puriri, karo, harakeke, kowhai, fuchsia, and rewarewa. During the early summer, after these flowers have disappeared, they may turn to other flowers such as rata and pohutukawa.

In some forests, tui also feed on a sweet substance called honeydew.

Droplets of sugary fluid are excreted by scale insects, and in some places honeydew is the most abundant source of sugar available to birds.

By summer they start to eat more invertebrates and fruit. By this time they may be feeding young chicks, and the mix of protein and carbohydrate is the best food for growing babies.

Some native beech trees are covered in honeydew

Tui eat a lot of different kinds of invertebrates including spiders, moths, cicadas, flies, bees, plant-suckers, stick insects and scale insects.  Tui also eat the honeydew made by scale insects.

They also eat a lot of different fruits over summer and autumn such as fivefinger, cabbage tree, coprosma, and mapau and they especially love totara and kahikatea fruits. They can't eat any really big fruits, because their mouths are too small to swallow them whole!

Tui look a little chubby because they have a large intestine that helps them to digest fruits. Finding food is sometimes difficult for tui, and when food is scarce, they may travel up to 30 kilometres in just one day to find new things to eat.