A bush adventure in Bay of Plenty
We call ourselves Kiwis, but most of us have never seen a real kiwi in the wild. In Whakata¯ne, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, there’s a better chance than in most places, of a kiwi encounter.
Listen hard on a quiet night in town and you might hear a kiwi call. Suburban residents on the edge of the bush reserves even find the occasional kiwi on a nocturnal stroll across a lawn.
With hard work from Whakata¯ne Kiwi Project volunteers, local kiwi numbers have risen from just eight in 1999 to more than 300. Most live on reserves on the big hill between Whakata¯ne and
hope, which is amazing considering how built up the area is.
This month is Kiwi Month, so during the school holidays, the nearly 8-year-old mokopuna and I joined about 15 other people on a Kids Discovery Dusk Walk, led by two energetic and knowledgeable volunteers.
We parked on a suburban street then popped into the bush for an hour of dusk and an hour of darkness, on a journey of discovery.
To be fair, chance of finding a kiwi with an excitable bunch of kids is not great.
But it is a fun way to learn about our national bird and other fascinating creatures, literally in our backyard.
The dusk part of the walk is a scavenger hunt. Stuffed toy predators hide in the foliage and, as the children find each possum, stoat and hedgehog, they learn these are the true scary monsters of the bush.
Without pest control, 95 per cent of baby kiwis don’t make it to one kilogram, the weight required to fight off predators.
We discover a kiwi egg in a hole in the bank, and pity the poor mother who pushes out an egg that’s 20 per cent of her bodyweight. But at least the father does the hard yards – sitting on the nest for 80 days.
On a bridge over a small stream, our guides play the male and female kiwi calls from their phones. We are rewarded with a response, but it’s from a weka, not a kiwi.
As night falls, we hear ka¯ka¯, many tu¯ı¯, and our lead guide startles a ruru (morepork) on the track.
It’s the mokopuna’s first night visit to the bush, and his initial fears of the dark disappear as soon as the magic of glow-worms light up a bank on the side of the trail.
In two hours, we see many we¯ta¯ and spiders up close and we encounter a trap that’s done its job on a big, dead rat. It’s two hours well spent in the realm of Ta¯ne-mahuta, god of the forest and all that dwell within, especially birds.
The Whakata¯ne Kiwi Trust runs a variety of walks throughout the year, with details on its website.
Another kiwi walk, this time self-guided, takes the mokopuna and I through town and along Whakata¯ne’s picturesque river bank.
A downloadable map provides clues to find 10 life-size kiwi sculptures, created by Dr Liz Grant, a zoologist and artist.
With each find, we read about the real kiwi Grant’s creation represents.
The walk takes us past a number of Whakata¯ne landmarks, including Po¯haturoa Rock, an important spiritual site and place of sacred ceremonies for Nga¯ti Awa.
The search also leads us past the historic Ma¯taatua meeting house that spent more than a century overseas.
The kiwis call us on to the waka on the riverside and the perfect ending for the mokopuna, the playground near Whakata¯ne Heads.
The writer and her mokopuna did the Kids Discovery Dusk Walk as guests of the Whakata¯ne Kiwi Trust.