Hūpai's Life

Hūpai was moved to Bushy Park creche near Wanganui from March to November 2008 and on November 30 was released to her home at Waimarino Forest.

Unfortunately she was found dead in July of 2009.  Find out all about Hūpai's life and why she was so special in her blog below.

This will be the last blog entry for Hupai.

Hūpai's Blog

Sadly, we said goodbye to Hūpai in July of this year.

In late July Hūpai was found dead from starvation after her transmitter got caught on the knot of a fallen tree. It was a very unfortunate and rare incident and all of us who watched her development are devastated by the news.

We’ve followed her progress from when she was first found as an egg, through to hatch and then release to Bushy Park to grow strong before coming home to Waimarino Forest. 

She was the 1000th BNZ Operation Nest Egg chick and her story was watched by the nation.  Although she is no longer with us, the tool that ensured her survival as a chick, BNZ Operation Nest Egg, will continue to be used to save kiwi, and we expect more than 150 kiwi to be returned to the wild this season using this technique.

Hūpai is saying goodbye to her number one carer.

Sasha, who first met Hūpai when she was just a big white egg, is very sad to be leaving her job with Enviro Research Ltd.

It’s been a painful farewell for Sasha in more ways than one. Earlier this month, while loading her 18-month-old bull into a horse trailer, she twisted her knee badly. The bull, named Hilux, a hefty 400 kilograms, was reluctant to be so confined, and flattened Sasha as he made his escape.

Sasha says physio seems to be working, and she’s hoping to avoid surgery. The saddest part is that she won’t be able to say good-bye to Hūpai herself until her knee is better in a month or two.

In the meantime, Kerry Oates, Enviro Research’s director, will keep tabs on our special little bird. Our next report will be care of Kerry.

A health check last week shows Hūpai has taken to life in the wild and is in tip top condition – clean, healthy and good at using burrows.

Sasha Stier, of Enviro Research Ltd, checked in with our special kiwi on behalf of the Waimarino Forest’s owners. She took along the high school students attending the latest Kiwi Forever programme.

Sasha says Hūpai behaved well with all the attention, and was not too stroppy. She has put on 350-grams and now tips the scales at 1700-gram.

The little kiwi’s bill has also grown to just over 9.5-centimetres long. When she’s an adult, Hūpai’s bill may be as long as 15-centimetres. Female North Island brown kiwi usually have longer bills than the males – studies of 103 male and 105 female kiwi found only one male had a bill as long as the females.

In November 2008, after 10-months away from home, Hūpai is released back into Waimarino Forest, where her egg was collected from.

A transmitter will help kiwi workers track her progress and, hopefully, once she is an adult, her eggs will help build the forest’s wild kiwi population.

In March, at one month of age, Hūpai is on the move again – this time to Bushy Park creche near Wanganui.

We now know that ‘it’ is a ‘she’.

By mid-July, Hūpai is a strapping 780-gram juvenile, and piling on an impressive 40-grams each month.   When spring’s sun warms the soils and she weighs 1200-grams, big enough to fend for herself, she’ll head back to her turangawaewae at Waimarino Forest.

February 17 was a Red Letter day for kiwi conservation.

At 3am, Hūpai, the 1000th BNZ Operation Nest Egg™ chick, emerged from its shell – damp, exhausted but healthy and well.

It had taken seven days from when Rotorua’s Kiwi Encounter staff first noticed the hatching process was under way. The telltale signal was when the shell grew lighter in colour – it meant Hūpai had broken the inner membrane and begun the long process of breaking out.

The young chick emerged a healthy 338.8 grams, and was standing after just one hour. Within five hours, it took its first shuffly steps on oversize feet, and by day two had dried out fully into a fluffy gorgeous chick.

Like most kiwi chicks, Hūpai lost weight during the first week (72.8 grams), surviving solely on the remains of the yolk from its huge egg.

Then the artificial diet kicked in, a delicious mix of ox-heart mince, vegetables, fruit, cat biscuits, porridge and a sprinkling of vitamins and minerals. As well, Hūpai swallowed some tiny pebbles – gizzard stones help kiwi digest their food.

Hūpai is now sharing a brooder with with another chick, Awa, who arrived from Whirinaki Forest. In about three weeks they will be off on their next adventure, heading to the predator-free Bushy Park kiwi creche, near Wanganui. There Hūpai will join its sibling and other young birds, living safe and sound until they are big enough to defend themselves from stoats and other predators – usually around 1 kilogram.

But it will be another five weeks before genetic tests can confirm whether Hūpai is a boy or a girl.

Summertime in New Zealand is kiwi chick time. Department of Conservation kiwi workers take to the field, monitoring the burrows of breeding adults, ready to pounce when their fertile eggs are ripe for collecting.

Every year since 1994, a few precious kiwi eggs are taken and hatched in captivity. These chicks are raised away from the paws and jaws of stoats, wild cats and other predators. Only when the young kiwi reach about a kilogram and can defend themselves, are they sent back to their wild home. It’s called BNZ Operation Nest Egg™, and this tool is helping to turn the tide and keep kiwi from extinction on the mainland.

To work out just when an egg is ready to be collected, a light is shone through the shell to silhouette the precious embryo. If it’s too small, the egg isn’t ready. Patience, patience.

January 2008 is a huge month for Operation Nest Egg™ and all the people involved. In Waimarino Forest, near Tongariro National Park, the 1000th egg is collected and taken to Kiwi Encounter in Rotorua, gently cradled inside a chilly bin lined with shredded paper to cushion jolts and jarring.

It’s from a pair of brown kiwi, and it’s due to hatch on 17 February. Back in the forest, ma and pa kiwi seem relaxed, but the staff at Kiwi Encounter are on tenterhooks.

The egg’s next stop is an incubator, a different planet to the damp, earthy forest burrow it was in just hours before. Inside the incubator, the top of this precious orb is kept at a steady 36.5ºC – too high, and the chick could have deformities; too low, and hatching is delayed.