Kiwi Creche

Visiting the Kiwi Creche

Yesterday, Room 8 and Room 7 visited the Kiwi Creche, (Crèche du bois Gentil). A kiwi creche is a massive piece of land border with a predator proof fencing. The Moonlight creche fencing is 1.8 kilometers. The creche is where young kiwi come to once out of Willow Bank, a place in Christchurch where Kiwi eggs are kept. If kiwi eggs don't get taken from their nests, stoats, rats and weasels will eat it. Kiwis stay in the creche until they around a year old when they can fend off predators with their big sharp claws and their wild hissing and growling noises. Kiwis are great fighters. The wildlife trust gave us the opportunity to come and learn more about the Kiwis. First what we did once we were outside the creche was split into three groups, these were the groups that we would rotate in as there were three tasks. Seeing the kiwis get their health check, learning about the predators and the traps or having lunch. First our group got to learn about all of the predators and the traps. Stoats, Rats and Weasels are the main threat. However, Dogs are another big threat. How the traps work, on one side of the wooden traps is an egg or 'bait'. The stoak for example will come in through a hole in wire mesh netting in other other side of the rectangle trap as there is wire covering the other end. He will then go through the middle hole and will think he can reach the food but before the food there is a big mettle trap. The stoat will put his two paws and head onto the mettle bottom, then, BANG! The trap will come down squashing the predator flat. Paul Berry, who was teaching us about the traps, showed us this process with a piece of hose though. Next he showed us where all of the traplines were on a map. Before we knew it we had moved on and were having a quick lunch. Next our group silently followed Jo and Ray to find the kiwi we were going to see get a health check. Each group was meant to see a chick each but there were only 2 so we saw the saw chick as the other room 8 group. Her name was Royal. She ended up being healthy, putting on weight and her bill had grown quite a bit in the last three weeks since she had gotten her last health check. Something else that we had learnt about the Kiwis was that females grow bigger and when an adult can weigh more than 3kg when males weigh over 2kg. We then quietly retreated back to the other groups. It was now time to each plant a tree. We walked down to a new planting spot in the creche each with a little tree in hand. The holes were already dug where we had to plant them so we just 'massaged' the plastic wrap to loosen up the roots and dirt. Then we would lower the tree into the hole, took off a frost protector and moved the dirt back over the tree. All the the activities were now done. We ended this amazing experience by Jonathan and I saying a massive thank you on behalf of the school.

Thank you to the Wildlife trust for letting us have this chance.