2006/05 NZ trip - Otorohanga Kiwi House |
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Monday May 29th
We had a bright sunny morning, still raining, but at least we could see the rain better. We were going to drive north to Auckland, but we had time to visit the Otorohanga Kiwi House. This is more than a house with a few kiwis in it; it’s a refuge for all of New Zealand’s local species.
The kiwis were bigger than those we‘d seen in Rotorua; these were large active birds with long beaks. Of course, when you’re only awake for four hours out of 24, you can be quite active during that time! They have two kiwi houses, one working the morning shift and the other the afternoon. To keep the kiwis happy, their environment is dark. Photography is allowed but no flashes, so you can imagine how hard it is the get sharp pictures of a bird that’s galloping 
around its den in the dark. There are three species of kiwi, and they have two on display there.
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Otorohanga's kiwis (5.04) |
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The house has some of the native reptiles: geckos and skinks similar to those found in Australia, and the tuataras, unique to New Zealand. They look fearsome in photographs, but they’re only about six inches long.
The other stars at the Kiwi House are the keas and kakas. The keas are large parrots from the alpine areas of the South Island. They are big enough to attack sheep, pulling flesh off their backs. Initially, they lo
ok a dowdy green, but their underwings are scarlet, flashing as they fly. The kakas also live on the South Island, but they are less flashy. As both are messy eaters, they 
share a cage with some wekas; these are flightless birdswhich have a reputation for eating everything in sight, from the dropped food to the mice that come to eat it. 
Many of the other birds in the gardens we had seen on our travels, but it was nice to see them up close, though some of them were just as hard to see in the aviary as on the outside.
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We were just about to leave when one of the ladies suggested that we waitforthe feeding of the kiwis. The kiwi handler said she’d been away for a week and wasn’t sure how the larger (greater spotted) kiwi would react, as an upset kiwi will peck and kick at everything. It 
was a happy reunion, obviously a lot of affection between them. The handler opened up their burrows, but neither bird was ready for bed yet. Then the handler took us next door, where she woke up the afternoon shift birds, a couple of brown kiwis. One of them was up and active immediately but the other went and sulked.
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Kiwi feeding (6.37) |
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