A good story
 

This one is about how the Rowi (a critically endangered kind of Kiwi - there are only about 450 of them left) are getting a helping hand.


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kiwi, thanks for sharing.
What an amazing story and it's such a beautifully presented website as well. Great images!

Thanks Lara.

I got my hard-copy version of that issue of NZ Geographic yesterday and hoped the article might be something which NT folk would find uplifting :).

This is a wonderful link... thanks for posting it, Kiwi!

I love learning about those nature scientists using technology to save endangered animals.

I wonder if NT members might enjoy another good NZ story. This one is the story of the Black Robins, which are related to the various Australian Robins.

A while ago the Black Robins were in a very bad way - there were just five of them left, confined to one island. Now, thanks to a great man called Don Merton and a much greater bird called Old Blue there are about 250 of them on two islands. Old Blue was the last female - she got her name because she lived way longer than usual and had a blue leg ring.

What Merton and his team decided to do was to take eggs from Old Blue's nest and put them into the nests of a related species (Chatham Island tits) on another island. In effect the Black Robin chicks got foster-mums and Old Blue kept on laying eggs in her nest. This was a very high-risk plan but it worked - the Black Robin chicks were moved back to their original island once they were old enough.

Special thanks to Old Blue.

There is more on this here;
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Fascinating. I vaguely remember seeing a documentary about this on tv years ago. I couldn't find that one but found another. It's in 2 parts and quite old. I had trouble viewing it just now but I'm working on slower than usual download speed at the moment and that's been causing some hiccups. Hopefully it'll work for you. It's pretty choppy for me.

brrrrrr, I bet it gets cold and windy there!


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The Black Robin - A Chatham Island Story 1989

Thanks heaps for that Lara :).

It was absolutely fascinating.

I had not realised that Merton first tried using Grey Warblers as foster-mums with no joy before he got the idea of using Tomtits. I also did not know that the fledgling Black Robins had identity crises (thinking that they were Tomtits) which was another problem which he had to solve.

Thanks kiwi
Great article - well written . . . and the link to more stories - I knew about the NZgeo magazine but wasn't aware it was available online - bookmarked now for rainy day reading.