SPONSORS
Elmo – Commercial Metals (Lynette and Simon Westgaard)
Renai – Renai Hart
Alick – Elaine Wigley
Kahurangi (deceased) – Holly Blue
Elmo hatched around Feb 1 2023. He is nearly 2 years old and our oldest surviving juvenile. He is still monitored.
Elmo is turning into a bit of a rock star survivor. Most of the birds that travel as far as he has, have not survived. Very recently several of last season’s (2024/25) chicks have died in a similar area to where he lives.
Thanks to your support we have more detailed information on the success of these birds than for North Island brown kiwi (Aptery mantelli) anywhere in New Zealand.
This study is the only one of its kind.
It will establish new theories on parental care and roles of female and male NI brown kiwi. It will also shed light on the survival of chicks from birds who were removed from their parents as eggs or very young chicks.
Detailed observation and photographic “portraits” of the most recent chicks will also shed light on how individualistic they all are contrary to popular opinion.
Elmo
Late last year, he was upwards of 1.7 kg with a bill length of 98 mm. That length of bill puts him into the range of a male kiwi. As the chicks are growing it is hard to sex them until they reach around 2 years as the bill lengths are similar between male and female.
After that time the bills of females get much longer and can reach 140mm.
Parents
Alick and Renai are the parents of Elmo and the late Kahurangi. Alick and Renai continue to nest in the same area and produce young. They have produced chicks prior to Christmas 2024 and are renesting now. I will have more detailed information on them in the Newsletter.
Survivorship
Elmo has survived in an area near the pine forest Whanui on the way back to Whangarei.
His sibling Kahurangi died in the near vicinity from a dog attack. Elmo has persisted against the odds!
There have been 20 chicks hatched prior to this 2024/25 season from 14 nests.
Seventeen were fitted with transmitters. Two thirds had survived as at December 2024 and the others died from stoat attacks and a dog.
Most nests had two eggs and most hatched two chicks. Unfortunately, some of these chicks only lasted a few days because stoats attacked them. One nest, Jo and Kiri lost both chicks prior to 15 days. This particular event has influenced timing and type of predator methods so that the first nests of the season are more protected.
Dispersal
Part of the study is to investigate the dispersal of chicks. When kiwi are translocated not much is known about the success of the translocated birds.
In the early years of our population several young male kiwi were transferred here. They kept moving and eventually they walked off to Whanui Forest where they died from dog attacks. However, we also noticed that some birds did not move very far, especially older males and most females. It appears that translocating juveniles may not be such a good idea. We wonder if moving older birds and perhaps known pairs could set up a population faster. We may never know now as this population is stable and thriving.
Further translocations are unlikely.
Sometime on, we agreed to look at the dispersal of chicks from the pairs that had set up “territories’ in the area.
Some chicks have remained within 1 kilometre of the nest site while others have walked much further and have established some 8 kilometres away. What influences these individual differences remains a mystery at this stage. Females may remain closer.
We had hoped that juveniles would fill what we thought were gaps in the area between known pairs. What we have observed however is that wild birds from other areas enter and juveniles move away. Carl’s use of nest boxes has also uncovered birds that we had released here but had “disappeared”. So, what we thought were gaps were occupied!
In Elmo’s case he left Tahi within his first year. When he left Tahi in September 2023, he was quite mobile. We think that young birds travel around looking for good habitat only to be moved on by resident kiwi. Around May 2024, Elmo established himself 6 kilometres away in Whanui Forest. Kahurangi his sibling went to an area further west and perished near Park’s Road in the Whanui Forest, which was around & kilometres away. For the last 8 months Elmo has been localised in an area along a river in old native bush adjacent to a Department of Conservation reserve. We hope to report that he is breeding there before the end of this study.
We are grateful for your support, thank you Pataua North Landcare.
