Kiwi release ceremony

As I mentioned earlier, the Kiwi bird is the most popular bird of New Zealand but also the most threatened. Therefore people put an enormous amount of energy into helping these long-beaked little fellas to steadily increase their numbers. Volunteer members of the Whakatane Kiwi Project go through the bush searching for their eggs, collect them and transport them to breeding stations where people take care of them until the kiwis are old enough to be released into freedom. An even more important task for the volunteers is pest and predator control (the main dangers are rats, possums, stoats and cats).  Because the flightless kiwi nests exclusively on the ground, the eggs and chicks are an easy catch for predators.

Project manager Bridget Evans and her colleagues label every single egg and the eventually hatched Kiwi so that its heritage and trail can be traced back. 

Since 2001, Whakatane Kiwi Project was able to breed and release more than 100 Kiwis. When it comes to the point where the grown birds can go back to the bush, a shared ceremony of Maori and Pakeha takes place during which the kiwis get a blessing for their future life in the bush.
Last Saturday we took part in such a ceremony:

The man who is standing and touching the kiwis is saying a prayer and blessing for them.

The setting for the ceremony of the brother and sister kiwis took place at the back of the school in Ohope. I was stunned by the large number of people who wanted to share this experience. 

Also many children were at the ceremony who learned at an early age to appreciate the gems of their country.  Kids were given special privileges such as being able to sit much closer to the volunteers when they were putting the transmitters on the kiwis, and the volunteers were very generous in letting the children ask questions and touch the kiwis.

Here, the transmitter is being secured to the kiwi's leg.  This way, workers will be able to locate the kiwi, and hopefully find it's nest in the future!

Kiwis, I have learned, are the only birds who have their nostrils at the end of their beaks - just as mammals do with their noses. They are able to supply their complete water demand from food which enables them to survive even in dry areas. As Kiwis are nocturnal they protect their bodies from the sun, thereby also conserving water.
Unfortunately the ceremony didn´t happen in the same place where the release for the birds itself eventually  took place; it would have beenvery nice to watch them doing their first steps into freedom, but this was a private affair.
It has to be mentioned that even though a dog is part of the mission in field work (dogs who had to undertake a test for skills and harmless and have to wear a muzzle while on duty) , dogs are banned from Kiwi zones. Dog owners who ignore this ban have to pay a fine.
There are kiwi aversion training classes offered for dogs on a regular basis. They work in the following way:  An electro collar gets attached to the dog. The dog is allowed to wander and when he finds some carefully placed kiwi poop, he is given an electric shock.  After this is repeated a couple of times this `treatment´ should ensure that dogs stay away from Kiwis.