Drought driving kiwi into daylight

Kiwi have been straying far into paddocks looking for food and water. Photo / NZ Herald

Visitors to Northland's trails and kauri parks have found hungry and dehydrated kiwi staggering around in the daytime as drought drives the normally nocturnal birds to wander in search of food.

There are fears the birds are being pushed into territory scraps over shrinking patches of moist land and that young kiwi, with their shorter bills, will struggle to reach a weight where they can fight off their number one predator - stoats.

The parched soil makes it difficult for kiwi to probe for worms and insects with their long beaks and the creatures that normally provide a meal for the rare birds appear to be burrowing deeper in search of moisture and out of their reach.

Robert Webb of the Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre said kiwi would normally run away from people, but lately they had been seen staggering during the day after straying far into paddocks looking for food and water.

The drought in Northland, in which Whangarei got only 30 per cent of its average rainfall during the past three months of 2009, eased only slightly after light rain a week ago and has raised fears for the region's kiwi population.

Mr Webb said a pair of tourists brought an underweight eight-day-old chick to the recovery centre after it fell into a dip looking for water in Trounson Kauri Park on what was probably its first day out of the nest. Young kiwi normally leave the nest after about a week.

"They [the tourists] heard this funny noise and they looked down and here's this little brown thing near this little puddle of water, very stagnant water ... flopping around," said Mr Webb. "He would have died if they hadn't found him."

Other dehydrated kiwi were brought to the centre from near Kerikeri, where he believed they were wandering far across the paddocks in search of dew and insects then being caught in the open when the sun rose and "cooking".

BNZ Save the Kiwi Trust community co-ordinator Wendy Sporle said chicks needed to reach 1.2kg to be able to fight off a stoat and there were fears this year's youngsters in Northland would struggle.

Ms Sporle, a Northland farmer, said she was coming across a number of unusually underweight kiwi with signs of dehydration, including dry coats in poor condition, and had heard reports of kiwi out in the daytime - usually a sign of hunger.

She had not seen the ground as dry for 15-20 years and forest mosses were also drying up.