Legendary Northland kiwi Sir Ed is dead but his offspring live on. Sir Ed was known to have fathered at least 10 chicks during his 20 years on Matakohe Island, an ecosanctuary in the Whangārei Harbour. Two of them are pictured here.
Legendary Northland kiwi Sir Ed is dead but his offspring live on. Sir Ed was known to have fathered at least 10 chicks during his 20 years on Matakohe Island, an ecosanctuary in the Whangārei Harbour. Two of them are pictured here.
“We knocked the bastard off,” Sir Edmund Hillary famously said in 1953 after he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay summited the world’s highest peak, Mt Everest.
Now a legendary Northland kiwi named in Sir Ed’s honour has been “knocked off” by a ferocious ferret that somehow landed on predator-free Matakohe/Limestone Island, a wildlife sanctuary and education facility in Whangārei Harbour.
Sir Ed the kiwi, well-known by thousands of Northland schoolchildren and adults who visited the island, was found dead in his nest on September 6 by rangers using a transmitter.
Two eggs, on which he had been sitting at the time, were in his nest beside him and were too cold to be incubated. Rangers suspect Sir Ed might have died two days earlier.
Sir Ed was a patriarch of Matakohe Island kiwi, featuring in numerous education and training programmes and fathering lots of chicks.
Because of the suspicious circumstances, rangers placed a camera overnight on Friday facing the remains of the kiwi nest site. Footage viewed the next day revealed the ferret.
Ranger Bevan Morgan immediately went into response mode to set several different types of lures and traps and to install extra cameras across the island. He was grateful that people from groups such as Friends of Matakohe Limestone Island (FOMLI) Backyard Kiwi, Northland Regional Council, and Kiwi Coast had also rushed to help.
Within 24 hours – on Sunday morning – a male ferret weighing 1.5kg had been caught and was “humanely dispatched”.
A rogue ferret that somehow found its way onto Matakohe Island not only killed an important breeding kiwi but also a nesting grey-faced petrel/ōi, which was found dead in a burrow. Its egg was missing.
Morgan said it was unknown how the ferret arrived on the island, as ferrets were “quite rare” this far north and were more likely to be seen around the Brynderwyns and to the west of the region.
Experts around the country, who had since been consulted, said there were no known cases of ferrets swimming as far as this one would have done to reach the island.
“It was highly unusual,” Morgan said.
“Because incursions across water [by ferrets] are extremely rare, our island did not have ferret traps installed.
Caught on camera: a 1.5kg ferret believed to have killed a kiwi and petrel on Matakohe Island recently.
“For a kiwi population, a ferret incursion is catastrophic, as ferrets can kill adult kiwi, whereas the smaller stoats can only kill chicks.
“Ferrets could wipe out entire kiwi populations in short periods.
“The full extent of the damage caused by this ferret is unknown.”
The island trapping network was set up for stoats, which were good swimmers, but was now being modified to include traps for the larger ferrets.
Fortunately, Morgan had continued to see and hear kiwi since the incident.
Sir Ed was introduced to Matakohe in January 2005. Since then, he has been the island’s champion father figure and New Age male, believed to have spent 50% of his life sitting on eggs. He was known to have fathered at least 10 chicks.
He had also played a starring role in school visits. While kiwi were less likely to be brought out for such groups nowadays, Sir Ed and his well-honed transmitter were a valuable part of training exercises for staff on the island, Morgan said.
Matakohe Island, previously home to Māori and later a European quarry employing about 260 people, was gifted to Whangārei District in 1989. It became the focus of restoration efforts and a sanctuary island for numerous native species. FOMLI aimed to “restore Matakohe to a functioning coastal broadleaf forest ecosystem”.
Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, much of which she spent court reporting.
