Life holds many surprises and we often would be completely amazed if we knew where it was going to take us. I certainly could not have guessed where I would end up at this stage of my life!

Around 50 kiwis have been released from Matakohe-Limestone Island.

I grew up as a townie in Whangarei, and was always interested in animals and farming. Eventually I went to Massey University and trained as a veterinarian. In my working veterinary life my focus has always been on farming, firstly with sheep and beef in Gisborne. I had a brief break when the children were young and then worked for 18 years as a dairy cattle vet based in Hikurangi, just north of Whangarei. I have always enjoyed my job and the people I have met whilst doing it.

With the children leaving home, however, it felt like time for a change. My husband was feeling the same way and when the opportunity for a new job came up we decided to take it! We are now the rangers on Matakohe-Limestone Island in the upper Whangarei harbour. We have certainly got the change we were after!

We live full time on the island, so trips for groceries involve a boat as well as the car. The house runs on solar power with a generator as back up. Our phone is a powerful cordless phone operating from a base set on the mainland – no power lines or phone lines to us.

The island has been an ongoing restoration project for nearly 20 years now. Initially the main work was tree planting as most of the original vegetation was gone. Tree planting is still ongoing, but with the increasing vegetation cover, reintroduction of native birds and reptiles has begun. The island is a kiwi crèche and it was the thought of working with kiwi which was one of the big attractions of the job. In my veterinary life I have had very little to do with birds and nothing to do with kiwi. It has been a steep learning curve getting up to speed, but has also been very interesting and great fun.

We currently have about 25 kiwi on the island. Most of them are young birds which are brought to the island when they are about a week old. Equality is alive and well in the kiwi world. Once the egg or eggs are laid, it is the father who does the job of incubating – nearly a 3 month undertaking. The newly hatched chicks stay in the nest with Dad for the first few weeks, but basically they are on their own as far as finding food is concerned. At this stage they are vulnerable to predators such as cats and the number one predator, stoats. Without help, almost 95% of chicks don’t make it to adulthood.

Our island is predator free, so the chicks are safe here until they are big enough to fend off these nasties. A big part of our job is keeping the island safe for the chicks. We are only about 500 metres away from points on the mainland - stoats and rats have been recorded swimming up to 2 kilometres to islands, so reaching us is no problem. We maintain a trap and bait station grid on the island and surrounding jump off points to ensure any arriving predators don’t last long. Without the pest control we estimate 15 rats and half a dozen stoats would arrive each year. Juvenile female stoats are often pregnant by the time they leave the nest, so it would only take one of them to reach the island for a population to become established.

The chicks stay with us until they are 1.2 kg, at which time they are released to the mainland into areas which are managed by trapping. Unfortunately, however they are still not completely safe. Dogs are the biggest killers of adult kiwi and most seem to find them irresistible. Potentially, adult kiwi can live to 50 or more years of age. The average age of adult kiwi in Northland is only 13 years, mainly due to dog kills. Keeping dogs under control, especially at night, is critical to ensuring the ongoing survival of this unique bird.

Finding the chicks again is good fun and involves a dog in a good capacity. We do this with a specially trained kiwi dog, called Percy, an English Pointer. Percy and his owner James come over at night and we work into the early hours of the morning following Percy around as he tracks and finds the kiwi. We have had some mad chases in the dark through the often dense vegetation – the kiwi definitely has an advantage over us in that situation. We would have no show without Percy and his sensitive nose. The birds usually hunker down under cover and Percy is trained to point to them and we then do the catching.

Once caught, we weigh the birds and if they are up to size we release them with a transmitter attached. The transmitter allows us to catch them again, usually in a day or two, for release to the mainland. Most of our birds go to the Whangarei Heads area where there are some very active Landcare Groups. These volunteers are managing traps and doing their best to create safe mainland areas for kiwi to live.  We have released about 50 kiwi from Matakohe-Limestone Island and the majority are doing well thanks to the work of these dedicated people. Some of the released birds are now breeding successfully and producing their own chicks – a wonderful result!

It has been a great privilege to work with the kiwi on the island. I am particularly fond of the chicks which arrive as very cute, little brown bundles. It is amazing how quickly they grow; most are large enough to leave in 8-9 months. Not long after we arrived on the island we had an interesting experience. I woke up one night to hear something on the back deck – it was a kind of banging noise. I couldn’t think what it could be with no cats, possums etc on the island. I got up and flicked on the light to find a juvenile kiwi poking around by the rubbish bin!! Its not every night you get woken up by a kiwi around the house – very cool.