Guest blogger: Poet & Campaign Manager for the Pied Stilt, Sam Hunt   Ed’s note: Sam Hunt lives amongst the birds in the Kaipara Harbour, so I asked him to be a campaign manager for one of his favourite neighbours – the pied stilt –  a bird which has polled poorly in our annual Bird of the Year competition. […]

Guest Blogger: Campaign Manager for the Harrier Hawk, Tom Kahu Hunt   Please note: voting for Bird of the Year will begin in mid-September.  You will, as you read cases for other birds of the year, come across sickeningly-cutesy reasons for choosing the cheeky kea, the twittering fool the fantail, or that flightless national bore the kiwi. […]

Guest blogger: Kakapo feeder Stephanie Gray It was a quietly momentous occasion—the last two kakapo youngsters to be released this season stepping clumsily into new lives in the wild to the fanfare of bellbirds and kaka.Weaned from morning crop-feeds several days ago, the birds left their chick-pens in robust good health. Their first night in […]

Guest blogger: Kakapo feeder, Stephanie Gray Beginning with a hot-pink sunrise over Stewart Island’s Raggedy Ranges, my fifth day on Whenua Hou wrapped up beautifully with a game of petanque on Sealers’ Bay. In true island-style, we bowled over and around heaps of glossy kelp, skipped the jack to the creek’s edge, and considered the […]

Guest Blogger: Kakapo feeder, Stephanie Gray By the look of the empty feed bowl, Sinbad enjoyed his  kumara cubes and macadamia nuts last night. He’s tidy too, leaving only a few crumbs, unlike the chicks who scatter lumps of pasty, half-chewed pellets up to two meters from their hopper—a kakapo feed station. I start to […]