Carolina Kiwis: Carolina Kiwis Finally See A Kiwi!

Sunday

The weather looked like it was going to cooperate today, so we went down to Rotorua to check out Rainbow Springs, a sort of mini-zoo full of indigenous NZ wildlife. Before man set foot on Aotearoa and brought other mammals with him, New Zealand was dominated by birds. In fact, the only mammals endemic to NZ soil were bats and seals. Rainbow Springs has a kiwi rescue project going on, and we took a guided tour of the facility.

Entrance to Rainbow Springs

When the first white men came here, they needed a season or two to expand their livestock's numbers before they started eating them, so they brought rabbits as a ready source of fresh red meat. Well, you can imagine what happened. To deal with the exploding rabbit population, they later brought dogs, cats, stoats, and other predators which soon decimated the kiwi population. The team at Rainbow Springs tracks male kiwis with radio-frequency transmitters, and when they're stationary for a while (i.e. sitting on an egg), they go and fetch the egg to incubate and hatch it at the conservation center. This allows the kiwis to avoid predation until they're big enough to escape or defend themselves, then they're released back into the wild.

http://www.rainbownz.co.nz/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi

Our tour group was just us and another couple, so Ro tended to dominate the conversation. He was thoroughly captivated by watching the laboratory staff candle the eggs (shine torches through them in the dark) to determine the age of the embryo, and there was even an egg hatching while we were there. We didn't actually get to see the bird emerge, though, as the whole hatching process can take around 24 hours. There is a nocturnal room that allows tourists to see kiwis active during our daytime; there were three unfenced enclosures, each with a young kiwi in it, but seeing them was a different matter. After much searching in the very dimly lit room, we spotted one kiwi sleeping in a shadowy back corner. It looked like a fuzzy ball, and if not for the thin white line (the beak), it would have been nearly invisible.

If only live kiwis were this easy to spot

Despite a thorough search of the other enclosures, the other kiwis were nowhere to be seen. Where are some night vision goggles when you need them? It was like five adults and a kid playing a futile game of Where's Waldo? Our guide apologized to us, and we went out to look around the static displays in the lobby. A few minutes later, the guide returned saying the kiwi had woken up, so we all sneaked back into the habitat for a look. It was the same one we had seen sleeping earlier, and it was rustling around in the bushes about 5 feet from us. We had to remind Ro to be completely silent so as not to scare it away. You don't get an idea of just how big a kiwi is from the media, because what you usually see are small kiwi chicks, but this kiwi was as big as a chicken. The guide cleverly coaxed it over to us by crinkling up a leaf to imitate a moving insect. Sure enough, the kiwi came right over to the low rail just in front of Ro. They stared at each other for a few seconds as Ro leaned over the railing, their faces only about a foot apart! Guess the bird didn't like the look of him, as it promptly turned and retreated into the bush...lol. Even so, the guide said Ro was one of the best-behaved kids he'd had on the tour in a long time.

Pictures weren't allowed in the kiwi conservation center, with the exception of the static displays, but not so for the rest of Rainbow Springs. We headed into the park and stepped right into a crowd of Chinese tourists standing around a picturesque trout pond as their guide gave an animated discussion in what we presume was Mandarin...a common sight around here we've found. One of the tourists saw Ro looking longingly at the pond and gave him what was left of her bag of fish food so he could have fun feeding them, obviously unaware that Mark had already bought some and stashed it in his pocket.

Eavesdropping on the Mandarin tour

Most of the animals that held Ro's attention were introduced from outside New Zealand, like the rabbits, donkey, pigs, chickens, and wallabies. The native tuatara is a pretty amazing lizard, but not very animated. Ro's favorite part of the park was probably the HUGE trout; some looked about as big as Ro! The afternoon was getting late, and the decorative lights in the park started coming on (it's open after dark since many of the animals are nocturnal); since it was a school night, we decided to call it a day and head for home. Ro spotted the luge chairlift nextdoor through the trees and begged to go, but it was getting too chilly and late, so we compromised and took him to a playground we'd spotted on the north shore of Lake Rotorua.

These wallabies look more content than Robbie Deans' crew these days. Note the joey in the pouch

Laughing it up at a chicken's antics

Ro incites a fish feeding frenzy

Ro sooooo wanted to get in this Maori waka noa

Face to fish face

Who knew New Zealand pigeons wore wife beaters?

The direct road between Lake Rotorua and Tauranga has been closed since 6 Aug due to a rock slide which buried two cars and knocked another down a riverbank, so we stopped at the playground near the blink-and-you-miss-it village of Hamurana on the longer way home. No other kids were there at dusk, so Ro had free run of the place. Sherry mostly stayed in the warm car and watched Mark and Ro entertain themselves with a "sweet as" flying fox. This one was a sit-on type that went in an oval, with a gentle slope to the track that belied the speed you could gain on it. We still had a long drive ahead of us, so we could only stay for about 20 minutes as we would be bumping up against Ro's bedtime by the time we ate dinner. On the way home, we weren't sure if Ro's complaints of "my belly hurts!" were car sickness or hunger, but either way it was fixed when we stopped for dinner at Ajo's Cafe & Restaurant in Mt Maunganui...very tasty.

Ro's favorite kiwi expression may get him in trouble back home...easily mistaken for "sweet ass": http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sweet%20as