Kiwi on the Move = Kiwi Link in Action! An exciting update on kiwi released earlier this year with Backyard Kiwi. Article by Todd Hamilton.
Two of the kiwi released at Parua Bay back in March have decided to go walkabout – possibly looking for mates. Remember that it was an extremely dry autumn and the kiwi on Matakohe/Limestone were struggling to find food and had lost a lot of weight. After their transfer to Parua Bay they settled at the Martins’ pine forest on Owhiwa Road and rapidly put weight back on with the good food supply there. In June the young male “Matakohe” headed north but only got a few kilometers before he was killed by an uncontrolled dog at Ross Road.
The other three kiwi have stayed settled in the pines at Owhiwa Road until last month when we lost radio signals for “Ping” and then “Kim”. Kerry Martin and I spent many hours searching for these kiwi and only heard static. Kerry kept listening in the Owhiwa area and I swept wider – catching up with locals that have good high points on their properties for listening for radio signals. Eventually a few weak peeps on Ping’s radio channel showed that she had headed north and I tracked her to the pines at the end of Taraunui Road – at least 5km away. Carl from Pataua North Landcare monitors kiwi there so he is going to try and narrow down her location. Kiwi Link in action.
Kim took even longer to find but eventually I tracked her to Tamaterau – 5km west of her last location. At the moment she is in the back garden of a property with good dog control and has been settled there – if she has found a mate she could spend the next 50 years there. When I was a kid there were plenty of kiwi in Tamaterau but like many areas we lost them in the 70s and 80s (we know why now: stoats, uncontrolled dogs and it was a ferret hotspot too with ferret farm releases there in the 1980s). Kim is the first confirmed kiwi there for many years.
The travels of these radio transmitted kiwi are an indication of the expanding kiwi population from the stronghold of Whangarei Heads where they have now greatly recovered from the dwindling numbers of the early 2000s. The “Kiwi Link” area between Whangarei Heads and Tutukaka is working hard on stoat and dog control so that this expanding population is able to flourish. All the hard work is paying off!
