New Zealand- Kiwi hunting!

be very very quite, it's kiwi hunting season you know! well, not hunting exactly.

while we were staying in wanganui, we headed out to a nature reserve called bushy park. we thought it would be a nice down-day. we randomly ran into one of the naturalistes working there. after a short chat, she informed us that in the next few days, she would be finding and re-tagging some of the kiwis in the park. we were invited to come along. wooooo!

we arrived on the arranged morning ready for an adventure. kiwis are rare birds and even rarer to see as they are nocturnal. their numbers are dwindling thanks to pests such as possums, stoates and rats. these pests find and eat the kiwis when they are still eggs or teeny tiny baby kiwis. as such, there is "operation nest egg". this organization goes out into the wild and collects kiwi eggs from the nest and brings them to the hatchery. basically the eggs are incubated until a small kiwi pops out.  the kiwis are then brought to busy park and are monitored throughout their growth process. when they reach the ripe ol' size of 1kg, they are released back into the wild. 1kg is apparently a "predator safe weight".

it was raining when we first arrived, so we had a few minutes to learn about the kiwi. it is an amazingly weird animal. thanks to NZ's isolation and lack of mammals (yes, LACK of mammals), the kiwi evolved quite uniquely. first, it is a flightless bird, with wings which are completely vestigial. second, it has many mammalian characteristics: heavy bones, body temp of 38 degrees, tough skin (like shoe leather!) with feathers like hair and nostrils on the end of it's beak. third, it lays the extremely egg in proportion to it's body size (20%). the egg is huge, as you can see in the pic.

we then followed our guide through bushy park's unmarked trails. she had this old school looking tracking device comprising of an orange antennae that she held overhead and a small signal emitter slung over her shoulder. she stops every few meters to check for a signal and then moves on. it can take hours to find a kiwi- they never stay in the same place. they also burrow quite deeply into the ground and can be hard to reach.

we followed the beeps until we were within a few meters. at which point we all need to proceed very quietly. kiwis are easily frightened and will run away if they hear us coming. the first kiwi we found was burrowed so deep that our guide was waist deep on her belly to retrieve it. she wiggled it out slowly. and then oh my goodness! the coolest thing ever. we were looking at a real live kiwi.

she proceeded to change it's tracking device, weigh it, look for it's poop in the burrow (the guides were excited. i was not) and checked it for lice and other such pests. then she helped it back into it's burrow. the kiwi we found had put on a few hundred grams in a short time, which was incredibly good. she also let us all pet it. it was so soft and almost furry/hairy feeling. but we could see that it was petrified, so we didn't take long to enjoy the moment.

we scurried off again and headed off to find the next one. by the end of our hunt, we'd not only found the 2 kiwi's we were looking for, we'd had the most amazing experience. there aren't very many people out there who can say they saw/touched a real kiwi out in the wild. i'm pretty stoked to say that i can!

xo

http://www.savethekiwi.org.nz/Home/