Patching up birds hit by cars or injured in other accidents is a labour of love for Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre director Robert Webb and his wife Robyn.
With the help of other unpaid volunteers like themselves, they have been running the centre since they set it up in 1992 - and they were previously saving birds through work from their home.
While the Webbs live on a health benefit Mr Webb receives for a back injury, the bird centre couldn't survive without financial benefactors.
So there were chirps and hoots of approval all around when Bayer New Zealand recently renewed centre sponsorship it had started about 12 years ago.
Mr Webb said Northpower had been the first commercial enterprise to sponsor the centre's bird rescue work, followed by Bayer and the Northland Regional Council. Centre operations cost more than $30,000 a year and Mr Webb said: "Without those guys [sponsors] we'd be closing doors." Bayer, a global enterprise based in Germany, makes health, agricultural and other products. It employs around 1100 people in Australia/New Zealand.
To say thanks and celebrate the sponsorship, Mr Webb took Sparky - a tame, one-legged kiwi unable to be released into the wild because of his missing limb - to the Bayer headquarters in Auckland to meet the firm's staff. Sparky was a big hit and Bayer managing director in New Zealand, Dr Holger Detje, said his company was thrilled to renew the sponsorship of the centre, which rehabilitates injured native birds to return them to the wild.
A special part of the centre is a Bayer unit used to incubate eggs found in the wild and also as a recovery area for injured kiwi. The centre rescues and rehabilitates more than 1300 birds a year and runs bird education classes for about 6000 children annually. Centre staff also provide advice on treatment of wild birds to other agencies such as veterinarians and zoos.