Cougar Line & Kiwi Conservation
Cougar Line has recently teamed up with Helen Taylor, a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, to help conserve little spotted kiwi on Long Island. We’ll be helping Helen monitor the birds on the island over the next few months using specially designed radio tracking equipment.
Keep up-to-date with the news as the chicks grow.
4 Jan 2012 - Long Island produces more kiwi chicks
Helen and her team just returned from another monitoring trip with the exciting news that she found three more kiwi chicks on Long Island. That’s four so far from the 10 birds she’s monitoring this year. The chicks, called Pebble, Robin and Iraiti were all weighed, measured and sampled for DNA before being returned safely to their nests to begin their lives on the island.
In an interesting turn of events, some of the birds that had abandoned their eggs on her previous visit were found to be having another go on new nests so there might be hope for a few more chicks yet. Keep checking back here for all the latest kiwi updates!
Meet Tim Tam the kiwi
On a recent trip to Long Island, Helen and her team were lucky enough to come across an extra kiwi for her study. He’s been named Tim Tam and you can see some pictures of him here.
Untagged kiwi are pretty tricky to find so it was fortunate that Helen had Rogan Colbourne from DOC and his specially trained kiwi dog Abbie with her. They found Tim Tam in a nest box incubating an egg. Sadly the egg has turned out to be infertile, but every new bird found on the island gives Helen more information about the population there.
We’re sure you’ll agree that Tim Tam is a pretty handsome bird. Helen will be following him right through to the end of February so we’ll be able to update you on his progress on these pages.
9 Nov 2011 - First kiwi chick of the year on Long Island
Fantastic news from Helen’s latest trip to Long Island – one of the birds radio tagged for her study has successfully hatched a chick – the first of the year for the birds in the study.
The proud father is the Kapiti Male – one of the original founders of the Long Island population and one of the oldest known little spotted kiwi in existence. Although his precise age isn’t known, this bird is at least 30 years old. That hasn’t stopped hatching a very cute little chick though.
Helen will be returning to Long Island later this month to check up on the nests for the other birds she’s monitoring and, as always, we’ll be supporting her work. Check back here or call into the office for more kiwi chick updates!
28 Sept 2011 - Kiwi eggs on Long Island
We’re continuing our support of Helen Taylor, a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, in conserving little spotted kiwi on Long Island. After her most recent trip to Long, Helen had some exciting news – at least seven of the birds she is tracking on the island are currently incubating eggs. Using a burrow scope at night when the kiwi were away from their nests, Helen was able to peek inside and get some photos of the eggs with an infrared camera.
We’ll have to wait and see how many of the birds manage to successfully hatch a chick – keep checking back here or call into our booking office for the latest news!