Kiwi Taxon June-July 2023
Jen and I have had a few wet cold nights out trying to locate our kiwi. As said previously it’s easier said than done, but we are getting better at working the technology and guessing the movement patterns.
Three weeks in a row we located the signals from Leigh-Ann and Jamie’s property! Over the last month Terry has been active for between 10.5 to 11.5 hours on average each night. Meanwhile we have watched Graham’s hours decline. Initially we thought it may be bad weather, but we can confirm that he is nesting! Last week he was active for just over 4 hours a night and this week only 2 and a half, indicating that he is reluctant to leave his egg to go to find food. Lesley recommends us putting cameras out in a couple of weeks.
Terry is still emerging from this nest right on sunset currently about 5:40pm (sunset 5:38pm on the day we recorded) and Graham is now an hour later this week 6:45pm. Back in their burrows – Terry still around 4 am, meanwhile Graham was back in the burrow at 9:30pm this week.
Kiwi Taxon July-Aug 2023
Now in early August and still we are locating the signals from Leigh-Ann and Jamie’s property. Graham has been in fast mode and for two weeks was definitely nesting – active for less than 3 hours a night, poor guy not much time to find a good feed. We listened again on 15 August and worryingly, his activity had nearly doubled. Four days later, Lesley came with her specialised tracking dog, Yagi to see if we could locate the nest and place a camera. We are sad to report that the telemetry showed he had moved and was in the gully behind where we expected and there was a change of state. Yagi found an abandoned nest, it smelt of a rotten egg and nearby were pig stools. We continued to search (with Yagi’s help) for more evidence, walking in circles through dense native bush and climbing around plenty of supplejack! Looking back at the figures there was one night where he had a change in pattern (out of the burrow and back in later, but stayed out for a longer period) just at the time he must have abandoned. Possibly a pig disturbed him or due to endless bad weather he was off the egg too long. The nest was in the roots of a large puriri with multiple openings – a good safe place on a northern slope. Over the years Grham has often abandoned his first nest so we are hopeful that he will have another in the weeks to come. We will continue to monitor him. We already suspect that he has moved for a period into the next valley.
Meanwhile over the last month Terry is still active over 10 hours on average each night and emerging from this nest right on sunset currently. The days are getting longer (sunset 5:53pm on the day we recorded). Terry seems to like the gully where he was located in April. At times due to the terrain his signal is hard to locate but we are confident he is moving up and down the gully in a small area. In fact, we have discovered that when recording, if he has already left his burrow and is active before we begin, we lose his signal for a while and then he comes back into range again. Sigh of relief 😊