kiwi birds

WE FINALLY SAW A KIWI BIRD!!!  We went to Rotorua the next day, and there, they have a kiwi incubation center.  We paid to take a tour to see what they do from start (gathering the eggs from kiwi birds in the wild)  to the end (getting the birds ready to release in the wild) and everything in between.  In the wild, a kiwi bird has a 5% chance of surviving.  There are just so many predators that have come in that love to eat kiwis – ex. stoats, possoms, dogs.  So by hatching them in this center and leaving them until they’re around 6-9 months, the survival rate increases to over 70%.  We went during the day so most of the birds in the park were outside sleeping.  But, we did get to see two that live inside and are in a nocturnal room – so they trick the birds into thinking it’s night, during the day, so people can see them.  The two we saw were very active and walking around poking their beaks in the ground looking for insects.  One of them acutally poked his beak up and was smelling me… YIKES.

So here is a picture we took to show you the bird to egg ratio.  It’s quite amazingly BIG!  It’s the largest egg to bird ratio – it’s equal to a human giving birth to a 4 year old!

And we found our home sweet home kiwi – the okarito brown kiwi!

And one last random kiwi fact…

Dispite their long beak… they actually have the smallest beak of all birds.  This is because the beak is measured from nostril to tip, and the kiwi’s nostril is at the very end of their beak!  Pretty wild!

By Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus