Kiwi - Oto's Story

Oto sitting on his eggs This is a true story about a Kiwi, it is from the May 1997 issue of the Kiwi Conservation Club magazine....

Hello. I’m sitting in my burrow on two eggs. Whew! Sitting is SO boring! Day after day after day with scarcely a moment to get a worm. So I’ve got lots of time to spare. I’ll tell you my story.

Oto's Story...
I remember being a very small chick with my dad and my sister. Out of nowhere, a dog attacked us!
It was horrible. Dad tried to fight and kick but the dog was so big and strong. It killed him.

Then I remember a man. He picked up my sister and me and wrapped us in his shirt. We were very frightened. Then we grew up in a place called a kiwi house. We had great kai! Meat cut in the shape of worms, bananas, sultanas, corn, peas and tofu, all mixed up with cold porridge. Awesome!

Many summers and winters passed and we were travelling again in another dark box. We were set free in this forest, a bit like the forest where I lived as a little kiwi.

It’s wonderful – so much to explore and poke my beak into. Twice now I’ve nested and sat on my mate’s eggs. They’ll be safe. I haven’t seen a single dog or cat or stoat on our island.

The Facts...

In 1991, two Brown kiwi chicks were saved from a dog in the Waipoua forest in Northland. For three years they were cared for at the Otorohanga Kiwi House. Then they were set free on Motukawanui, an island free of predators in the Bay of Islands. The Wildlife Officers called the male kiwi ‘Oto’.

The mother kiwi lays one or two very big eggs in her burrow. Then the male kiwi sits on them to keep them warm. It takes 80 days for the eggs to hatch. The father kiwi gets very thin and hungry but he sits on the eggs as long as three days without a break!

The kiwi is only found in New Zealand. It is our most ancient bird. Fossils show that kiwi were living in New Zealand 70 million years ago! The kiwi is a very strange bird. It can’t fly and it has loose, hair-like feathers and long whiskers. Most birds can’t smell very well, but the kiwi can. It has nostrils at the end of its long beak, and sniffs for its food – worms, beetles and spiders – on the forest floor.

DANGER!
Kiwi die when native forest and scrub is cleared and burnt. You might think they are safe in protected places like National Parks, but even there, kiwi get killed. All sorts of dogs kill kiwi – pet dogs, hunting dogs and stray dogs. Even the best, most obedient dog will kill a kiwi. When you go for a walk in the forest, PLEASE LEAVE YOU DOG BEHIND.

Ferrets and stoats kill kiwi Most grown up kiwi are too big and strong for stoats and wild cats to attack. But chicks are not. Nineteen out of twenty chicks die before they reach their first birthday. This means not enough chicks are growing up to replace the old kiwi, and kiwi numbers are falling fast. To save our kiwi we must protect the forest where they live, and protect the kiwi by protecting them from predators.

Return to the Kiwi fact sheet