Rowi Project Blog

One rowi pair have been causing us quite a bit of trouble lately!

CN pair, otherwise known as Whetu and Marama, have produced an egg that has kept us returning to their burrow we’ve tried to rescue—first as an egg and then as a chick—five times.

The first attempt was made by Hayley, Mike and Duncan whose radio receiver passed out within metres of the burrow!  How frustrating, they knew they were close but were surround by a hundreds of possible rowi homes.

A few days later, Hayely, Mike and myself had a second go at trying to rescue the egg.  Their home is about a 1 km walk in a reasonably flat (albeit muddy) area just off Mapourika Lake.  When we got to the burrow there was an entire possum skeleton out front. It looked like Whetu and Marama had dealt to this sorry possum and had carefully left its remains as a reminder to any other rodent who should think about trying to take them on—that’s what we like to see! Unfortunately we couldn’t reach the egg on this occasion without disturbing the adult birds, so we decided to leave the egg to hatch.

At the entrance of the kiwi burrow

In this situation we wait until the adult transmitters tell us that the egg has hatched and that the chick is at least four days old before we go to catch it. This involves arriving at dusk and sitting sooooo quietly that you can hear every stick and leaf move at the entrance of the burrow.  Hayley, Mike and Duncan went in on a Sunday night to catch the chick. Armed with catch nets, mosquito nets and insect repellent they waited, until suddenly the chick zoomed out of the burrow without any inhibition so fast that all three rangers missed it!

Lucy with the fashionable mosquito netting head gear

Next Anna and I went in to collect this confident chick—although this time it was not so confident.  We had not long positioned ourselves in front of the burrow entrance listening to the irritating high-pitched hum of the 50 or so mosquitoes, who were hovering off the surface of my face, when we started to hear intermittent morepork calls, then a few scuffles from the burrow, a couple of stomps and squeaks.  An adult carefully moved into the entrance and sniffed the air. It took a couple of steps right and sniffed, then another couple of steps left towards Anna and sniffed around her hands.  This was enough, obviously Anna was too smelly! The adult turned and, baring its fluffy behind, disappeared down the burrow.  We heard a bit of a conversation between the adult and the chick—which I can only imagine went a little bit like, “you’re not going out tonight son, there’s something very stinky out there”—and that was the most kiwi we saw all night. We waited and waited and could hear the adult and chick come to the bottom of the entrance, sniff the air and disappear again, all night they did this and all night we waited. At 4.30 am we retired, chick bucket empty.

Third time lucky, Anna and Ieuan went out on a rainy night and nabbed it. Fantastic!

We were all amazed that a chick that old was still alive and were anxious that any night could be its last. The lucky chick is now at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve for a few weeks to make sure it’s healthy before being transferred to predator-free Motuara Island where it will stay until it’s big enough to return to Okarito to beat up more possums—just like its parents!!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 11:18 am by Lucy – Rowi Field Ranger and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “A Troublesome Family”

1. Kiwi says:

   2 February 2010 at 10:48 am

   “Armed with catch nets, mosquito nets and insect repellent they waited, until suddenly the chick zoomed out of the burrow without any inhibition so fast that all three rangers missed it!”
   Hahaha, really funny. Are they really THAT fast?
2. Iain says:

   3 February 2010 at 11:03 am

   They sure are. The first few days after hatching they’re pretty clumsy while trying to find their feet, but after about 10 days, there’s no stopping them. They’re natural sprinters.