By ELEANOR BLACK
It's a boy! Or a girl ... We'll know in a year.
But, regardless of sex, Fir, the first kiwi chick hatched at Rotorua's Rainbow Springs this season, is already a star.
The double handful of feathers is resting in an incubator, recovering from the exhausting hatching process, which it sped through in a remarkable 2 1/2 hours.
Kiwi usually take several days to hatch - sometimes as many as five.
The seventh chick born to Doug and Lass of the Tongariro Forest conservation area - where, as you might have guessed, Douglas firs dominate the skyline - popped into the world with a series of tiny peeps on Monday afternoon.
Fir's sex will not be clear for at least a year, when the bill becomes more developed.
Male kiwi have longer bills and grow faster.
Fir's journey into the world began about 11.30 am, when the chick pecked at the shell which had been home for about 78 days, creating a star-shaped puncture.
By 11.45, the 345g bird had managed to push against the sides of the egg, creating small flaps.
An hour later, its bill was poking through the shell for a first sniff at the outside world.
At 1.05 pm, Fir's muscular legs pushed against the shell hard enough to cause a major crack, and five minutes later the chick began wriggling its way out of the egg.
At 1.32 pm, Fir finally struggled free of the confining shell and landed in a wet little heap alongside it.
Before the end of the week the now fluffy chick will be happily snuffling around a "brood box" containing a small heater and soil planted with tasty worms and insects.
Four to five weeks later it will make its first foray into an enclosure full of plants resembling the bush that Fir will encounter when released into Tongariro in five months.
Fir's mother will probably lay again in mid-November, and her mate will lie protectively on the clutch in a lonely (and hungry) vigil while Lass forages for food independently.
"The mum goes away and probably does not come back to the male," said Helen McCormick, head of Operation Nest Egg at Rainbow Springs. "She will probably never even meet her chick."
The programme - based at Auckland Zoo, Rotorua, Napier and Whangarei - has just finished its most successful season.
Fifteen of the endangered North Island brown kiwi have been reared at the Kiwi House at Rainbow Springs and released into the wild.
Little kiwi in a hurry to hatch
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.