Isn´t it cute, this little kiwi?

They were 3 on a quad at night: Renée, a ranger from DOC (Department of Conservation), the little Kiwi, and Yep Yep Yep. It was raining, but the only one that did not get wet was the little Kiwi because he traveled inside a box. The terrain was quite irregular: a forest track with holes and puddles, and occasionally, a river to be crossed.

Yep Yep Yep felt amazed by how the quad was able to move in this terrain and perceived how the little kiwi was beating with it´s beak the base of the box, which he attempted to balance in the turbulence of the movement. After a long half of an hour, they took a narrower path, surrounded by tall grass, which they followed for a while, until they arrived where the story of the little kiwi began.

The adventure starts!

Night Adventure on a Quad!

The kiwi´s mother had the egg inside for 30 days. The egg of the kiwis is quite large compared to the size of the mother since it is about 12 cm long and occupies 20 percent of her body!

Comparison between a Kiwi egg and the adult female

How are the Kiwis?

The Kiwis are part of the Ratites family (Struthioniformes), which includes the african ostrich, the cassowary and emu from Australia and the South American Rhea (or “ñandú”). 200 million years ago Pangea was divided into 2 sub-continents: Laurasia (Future North America, Europe and Asia) and Gondwana (future South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand). It is believed that all ratites come from a common ancestor. The kiwi is indeed the smallest of this bird family, and for some reason the bird’s size has decreased but the egg in comparison is very big!

The last days before laying the egg are quite painful for the kiwi´s female: the egg presses the organs inside her, she does not eat and she can barely move. Maybe that’s why once she lays the egg she has enough and she´s not keen to incubate it. The male will incubate the egg for 90 days and the kiwi will hatch with feathers and quite developed. After a few days of paternal help it will have to manage on its own!

With this method of reproduction, only 5% of kiwis are successful: parents sometimes abandon the egg, or when the father leaves the nest at night to eat, it will be eaten by a rat or stoats.

Kiwi in the hands of a ranger

Despite being New Zealand’s emblem it´s not easy to see: there are only 70,000 birds across the country and 35,000 are on a small island to the south, in Stewart Island. In addition the Kiwis are only active at night, they like to move through canyons and isolated places, and by day they sleep in burrows in large tree bases. Tourists usually tend to confuse the “Weka”, also an endemic bird, for the kiwi. When all excited they show the photo of the “Kiwi” that they have seen in the forest the New Zealanders burst into tears!

A weka, not to confuse the eye with the Kiwi!

That is why between the DOC and some private companies (banks, chemical companies that want to clean their image, etc…) are trying to preserve the kiwi, the bird that does not fly and that only lives in New Zealand.

Kiwi: fruit, bird or person?

We already know the bird and the fruit. But why do we call kiwi to New Zealanders? A Scottish man married to a New Zealander, invented a shoe polish in the early 20th century. In honour of his wife, he named it “Kiwi” for the rarity of the bird who lived in New Zealand. In the First World War, the American and British Army used this show polish because it was of good quality and started calling Kiwis at the New Zealand soldiers, and the name remained.

Let’s go back to our story: the release of the Kiwi!

Little kiwi´s father name is Rocket and the egg he incubated was the egg “Rocket 5”, the fifth of Rocket. When Rocket went to eat insects one night not so long ago, a ranger of DOC stole the egg and took it to Rotorua, at 200 km, where they cleaned it, disinfected and incubated artificially. Once the egg hatched, RK5 (the little Kiwi) was fed for 3 weeks of the egg yolk, which is the richest in the world (it has a 60% yolk). In this way they success rate at eclosion rises to 85%.

Measuring the beak of an adult kiwi

After 3 weeks we took it by quad to the area where they swiped the egg. Once they placed a band with a transmitter on its leg and measured the bill, Renée found a sheltered base of a tree and put a few ferns in the hole to make the nest cosier. The beak of Kiwis is always measured when they are captured so they can know faster if it is male or female depending on whether the bill grows slowly or quickly.

The little kiwi will be called RK5 for 6 months, in which the survival rate is low (from 20% to 80% depending on if they have thrown TNT in the forest, but that’s another story…), and if it survives it will given a proper name.

During 4 months the rangers will capture it once per month to change the band of the transmitter, so that it does not tighten the leg. During the following days it will explore by night in the vicinity of the burrow to look for some insects, but won´t go that far.