Gerry, Max and I met at the DoC office at 8am where we joined Pete Graham and Rolf with all the tracking gear. We drove out towards the hills, climbed over the fence and walked into a small block of pine trees on someone's farm. Pete put the muzzle on his dog Rua and held up the tracking monitor to find the kiwi dad and his 2 chicks in their burrow in a bank underneath the pine trees.
He weighed them all, measured their beaks and put identity chips into the 3 week old chicks and changed the transmitter on their dad.Carefully he placed the chicks back into the burrow and then their dad to keep them warm and safe.
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| Female carrying an egg |
We moved sites about 500m away along a creek running between a patch of bush and an open paddock. Rua and the transmitter picked up a kiwi pair in a hole in the creek bank. There was a male and a ‘gravid’ female, meaning a female about to lay an egg in the burrow. They returned the female to the burrow, trying not to disturb her and then changed the male kiwi’s transmitter. Pete and Rolf continued on over the hill to track another young kiwi with a transmitter but it was time for us to leave. I feel very privileged to have been so close to our national bird.
