Lambert – Dad of the year
Lambert is one of the kiwi chicks that we have brought into the Whangarei Heads area from a high density kiwi population out at Purua (west of Whangarei).
Nick Edgar, CEO of NZ Landcare Trust, with Lambert
He was hatched by “George” the kiwi (it’s the dads that get to sit on the eggs for 80 days!) at McGraths’ farm at Purua in December 2006. He got his name from George Lambert who was an old time farmer out there that protected the bush his dad “George” nests in.
We transferred Lambert to the Limestone island kiwi crèche in the Whangarei Harbour at a weight of 260g. 18 months later (July 2008) we re-caught him using a trained kiwi dog to find him, he had grown to 1760g and was ready to come back to the main land.
He was released at the Hunts’ farm on the eastern side of the Taurikura Ridge by a group of locals and special guests NZ Landcare Trust’s head office. We put a radio transmitter on his leg as one of a sample of 15 kiwi we track at the Heads to check on their movement, survival and breeding progress.
Lambert spent the next year wandering around the Taurikura Ridge. He must have found himself a local girlfriend in that time because in August 2009 Todd found him nesting in a hollow Mangeao tree above Mckenzie Bay. Lambert successfully hatched both eggs from that nest and we named them “Marita” (after Marita Hunt who has been working on the possum and rat control project at Taurikura Ridge) and “Amber” (who was named by the NZ Landcare Trust head office in recognition of their support of the Landcare projects at the Heads.
To successfully hatch two chicks is pretty good going for a 2 and a 1/2 year old kiwi, as kiwi are the slowest growing bird in the world and don’t fully mature until around 5 years old.
As if that wasn’t enough, Lambert and his mate started another nest in November 2009. We knew this because after his last nest Todd had changed Lambert’s transmitter for a ‘smart’ “chick timer” transmitter that measures the movement of the kiwi using a mercury switch and indicates when the kiwi settles down to incubate an egg (pretty clever technology!)
This nest was in a pampas bush in a pine plantation and in January 2010 Lambert successfully hatched another chick, which we named Jeremy, after the computer geek that developed this web site.
3 chicks in one season (and its not over yet) for a young kiwi male makes him our “Dad of the Year”.
