Report and pictures by NICOLA TOPPING
Life in the wild is just beginning for Fir.
After being hatched and nurtured in captivity for 19 weeks, the North Island brown kiwi - sex still unknown -is back in the Tongariro Forest conservation area where it started life as an egg.
Born to parents Doug and Las, Fir has been raised by Operation Nest Egg kiwi handlers and is named after the Douglas Fir in the forest where the egg was found.
Fir's minders suspect the little brown kiwi is a male because of its growth rate and the length of its bill, but without a DNA test it is difficult to determine a kiwi's sex until adulthood. The male is smaller and has a shorter bill.
When the egg was removed from the nest after two months, Fir became one of the winners in the lottery of survival.
Fewer than 5 per cent of chicks hatched in the forest survive the predatory attentions of cats, rats, pigs, dogs, ferrets, stoats and even possums.
Operation Nest Egg is a cooperative programme between the Department of Conservation and wildlife organisations such as Rainbow Springs in Rotorua.
Hatching kiwi chicks can be tricky.
"The incubation of kiwi eggs has not been perfected even yet, but we have made a lot of progress," says kiwi handler Helen McCormick.
Fir's egg was incubated for 14 days at Rainbow Springs before the bird hatched.
At 36 days Fir went from a heated brooding box to an outdoor enclosure with burrows and undergrowth, where it was fed minced ox heart, porridge, wheatgerm, banana, soggy cat biscuits, vitamins and minerals until its weight soared to 558g.
Helen McCormick predicts that in the wild Fir will lose weight in the first few weeks of freedom.
"He will become leaner, harder and forest wise," she said, taking a gamble on the bird's sex. "But he's quite an aggressive little bird and that should stand him in good stead."
Fir, like other kiwi, wears a transmitter tracking his movements.
Conservation staff will weigh him once a month for the rest of his life.
In the meantime, there are 11 other birds being nursed by the Operation Nest Egg crew.
In three years they hope to be nursing one that Fir has had a hand in producing.
Hatched and dispatched - a kiwi diary
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