Day 3 - Wild Eyes

Curious Kiwi, a native New Zealand bird, is your tour guide for today. He is going to take you to visit the Otorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park where many of his aunties and uncles currently live. The bird park is a five hour drive from Dargaville so you hit the road right after breakfast and arrive in Otorohanga at lunch time. As you walk through the birdhouse you learn about the work being done to conserve and protect the native birds of New Zealand. You decide to help out by ‘adopting’ a native animal. Visit the ‘Adopt a Critter page’ on the Otorohanga bird house website to choose one animal to adopt. On your blog, tell us the name of the animal that you chose and a little bit about them. What kind of animal are they? What do they eat? Where do they normally live? You can use Google to help you with your research.

A Kea Parrot

A Kea parrot is the world's only alpine parrot. The Kea parrot omnivorous diet includes carron, But mainly of root, berries and also leaves.

A Kea parrot is, most commonly found in the Arthur's pass national park. And also in the fiordland national park.

These Kea parrot likes dismantling cars

The Kea parrot is a large parrot about 48 cm to long weighing 0.8 to 1 kg.

A Kea parrot has orange feathers on the underside of its wings. The feathers on the side of a Kea parrot face are dark olive brown and the feathers on its back and rump are orange red. Also om of the outer wing are dull blue.

A Kea parrot has four toes on each feet. Two that point forward and two that point backwards.

After your great visit to the Otorohanga bird house it is time to hop back onto the bus and head towards the Hawke’s Bay – your resting place for the evening. Hawke’s Bay is a beautiful region of New Zealand. It is known for its wineries and gorgeous scenery. When you arrive in Napier, the largest city in the region, you go for a walk through Waitangi Regional Park and notice that many of the leaves on the native trees have been damaged. Curious Kiwi tells you that they were damaged by possums, non-native predators, from Australia. People in New Zealand are working hard to trap and kill these predators. Their goal is to remove all of the possums (and other predators) by 2050. Go to the ‘Predator Free 2050 website’ to read more about their work.

Possums carry a disease called bovine TB. Which they sred to cattle. Possum eat about 21,000 tonnes leaves and flowers in just one night. Once possum population got very high, trappers began to make a good living from hunting them. But there are still about 30 million possum in new zealand today.

A really cool new website called Wild Eyes has recently been launched in New Zealand. It is a programme for students who want to complete fun activities (called ‘missions’), take pictures and post them on the Wild Eyes site. For this bonus activity, go to the Wild Eyes site and complete the ‘Giant Moa Discovery’ mission. To earn full points you must post a picture of your Moa on the Wild Eyes website and on your personal blog site. The Wild Eyes team and I can’t wait to see what you create!