Braveheart is ready for release after months spent recuperating. Inset: The Kiwi's injured beak. Photo / Wildbase Massey University
Braveheart is ready for release after months spent recuperating. Inset: The Kiwi's injured beak. Photo / Wildbase Massey University
They call him Braveheart - and it's a name he wears every bit of.
The North Island brown kiwi's gutsy battle back from a mystery ailment, which involved a stint in hospital and a rare operation, makes for one of the more inspiring tales of kiwi conservation.
Tonight , his carers will celebrate a happy end to it with the bird's release into the Coromandel bush.
Braveheart hatched a year ago at the nursery Kiwi Encounter, based at Rotorua's Rainbow Springs, with a weight of around 330 grams.
However, in March, his minders noticed an unexplained drop in his food consumption and grew worried.
They soon discovered a very fine fracture in his lower jaw, at the base of his bill, which might have been caused by probing the ground or scrapping with other chicks.
The team sent him straight to the Massey University-based Wildbase Hospital in Palmerston North, where veterinarians inserted a tiny steel splint on to his bill to lock the fracture and jaw together.
After three months' convalescence, Braveheart was brought back to Rotorua, where he's been learning how to poke around in the undergrowth again and has brought his weight back up over 1kg.
Braveheart is ready for release after months spent recuperating. Inset: The Kiwi's injured beak. Photo / Wildbase Massey University
"He's been an amazing bird," Kiwi Encounter's Claire Travis said.
"We did put him in our ICU and have since put him through a process to make sure everything's well. In July, we popped him back in the outside run, and now he's back to his old feisty self."
Later today, Paula Williams of the Project Kiwi Trust will drive Braveheart up to his new home in the wild at Kuaotunu, where a transmitter fitted to him will enable regular monitoring over the next few months.
At the release will be Faye McIllroy, of trust sponsors SGS New Zealand and whose Scottish former colleague Don Roberts named the bird after his homeland's hero.
Ms McIllroy said Braveheart would also be seen off by her 2-year-old daughter Ava, in what would be her first brush with a kiwi.
"She's fascinated by anything small and fluffy so it will be interesting to see how she'll be, that close to his beak," she said.
"Just the fact how Braveheart's still holding on and doing well, goes to show how he's got something of that indomitable spirit that his name really epitomises."
