Shy envoys off on their OE

Globetrotting kiwis. Photo / Steven McNicholl

It's the Kiwi OE, but not as you know it. American researchers studying ways to breed kiwi in captivity are about to receive their first delivery of the shy brown birds for almost 20 years.

Five North Island brown kiwi were packed into crates and put on a plane to Los Angeles yesterday evening, destined for new homes at San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia and Frankfurt Zoo in Germany.

The two pairs and a female will join an expat population of about 39 kiwi - 23 living in Europe and 16 in America.

Kathy Brader, from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington DC, said the birds were an "exciting" addition to the zoo's species survival programme and would allow the Americans to give New Zealand more help and advice to save the species.

The zoo, which will get one breeding pair, plans to investigate artificial insemination and may sponsor a graduate to study records of wild kiwi.

"Interest in kiwi in the United States is huge, and we are very proud ambassadors," said Ms Brader, who has worked with kiwi for 24 years. She said caring for kiwi was part of her first assignment as a birdkeeper at the zoo.

"The first time I met a kiwi it was basically love at first sight. They are the coolest birds."

The Smithsonian got its first pair of kiwi in 1968 as a gift to the US Government from then New Zealand Prime Minister Keith Holyoake. They produced the first chick born outside of New Zealand in 1975, a male which is still alive and entertaining visitors at the zoo.

A spokeswoman for Auckland Zoo, which hatched and reared the birds being exported this week, said they were needed overseas to inject some genetic diversity into the small populations.