Neighbours at war
It’s the little things that get on your wick in summer. Slow drivers. Fast drivers. Soggy fish and chips. Neighbours in tents throbbing with bass. Aucklanders out of their natural habitat.
When we bought our wee bach at Tairua, on the Coromandel Peninsula, locals warned us that the house next door hosted legendary summer soirees, but we were unperturbed. We’re country people; we do everything at a high decibel. Is it any wonder the tenants next door moved out shortly after this horde of holidaying Hallinans moved in?
Despite its main street location, within walking distance of the pub, our bach is surprisingly peaceful at night. My husband has only had to intervene once this summer, when a bunch of drunken yobbos engaged in a bit of midnight biffo on the footpath out front.
But randy teenagers, rowdy 20-somethings, and sexist septuagenarians who spout Trumpisms aren’t the worst sorts of holiday neighbours: that honour goes to the uneducated larrikins who terrorise local birds. Thus, when I saw a notice advertising free kiwi avoidance training sessions for dogs, I took our farm dog along.
There are four distinct types of North Island brown kiwi, Apteryx mantelli: Northland, Eastern (from Bay of Plenty to Hawke’s Bay), Western (Taranaki/Whanganui), and our plucky local Coromandel bird. Unlike their cousins, whose populations are around 8000 each, the Coromandel Brown Kiwi is the rarest, with only around 1700 birds left in the bush.
The brown kiwi could teach us all a thing or two about marital harmony. The birds are famously monogamous and generally mate for life. They will occasionally kick their partner out of their bracken fern beds for nonperformance (a failed breeding attempt), but monitoring efforts have shown that of all the eggs laid, only five per cent are popped out by mums with a bit on the side.
Perhaps that’s because the fellas are willingly do their share. Male birds manage the incubation process, sitting on their tush for as long as it takes for the eggs to hatch, and they’re also in charge of the creche facilities, caring for the chicks until they’re ready to fly