After decades of decline, Kiwis have been born again in New Zealand’s capital

Worldwide bird news: two young kiwis have been born in the wild in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. Wellington is located on a bay of the North Island, has a population of 400,000 and is the same size as “Manhattan and Brooklyn combined,” as The New York Times wrote on December 4.

It is the first time in living memory that eggs have been hatched in an urban environment, in this case the suburb of Makara. Since 2016, the government has set up an intensive program, the Capital Kiwi Project, to reclaim the national flightless bird in the city. The two chicks are living proof of this. The feather-lined, soft kiwi nest with the young was discovered behind a “curtain of dead branches in a meter-high hedge,” according to the American newspaper.

Kiwis are shy, flightless, nocturnal birds, completely adapted to life on the ground. The chocolate-colored plumage provides good shelter. The kiwi has nostrils at the end of its long beak. Its exceptional sense of smell allows it to find food on the ground. They are eccentric, evocative birds with mouse whiskers and dinosaur-like legs. Locals also call the birds “long-legged avocados.”

Once upon a time, before the colonial period that started around 1800, about 12 million kiwis lived in the archipelago on the other side of the globe, divided into five different species. The colonists also came with rats, dogs, cats, merciless predators, as well as stoats. Numbers plummeted dramatically and without intensive conservation programs the species would have become extinct. Now there are about 70,000 kiwis living there, most of them in remote places.

The city bustle had chased the animals away, but they are now reluctantly returning to the built-up area. Calculations indicate that the population is declining by 2 percent every year and that 95 percent of newborns do not survive the first year of life.

To deter predators, there are 5,000 traps in and around Makara. Farmers, students and local residents work together to keep the environment free of predators, which is the only way the reintroduction can succeed. 63 kiwis have been released in Makara and it is hoped that they will now produce offspring. Then the nocturnal flightless bird is back in the city.

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