Brown teal set free at Ngunguru

Forget their cute paddling, dabbling ducky ways ... brown teal are unusual, stroppy little birds.
Brave, hardy, territorial, aggressive and no bigger than a seagull, they'll take on something as big as a swan and fly like a bullet at a mallard on the wing.
But despite their feisty attitude to other avian creatures, they're sitting ducks when it comes to their greatest enemy - stoats. That mammalian danger, other mustelids, feral cats and rats join loss of habitat as reasons why brown teal had reached alarmingly endangered numbers by the 1980s.
Yesterday 64 juveniles, bred through the Brown Teal Recovery Group's captive breeding programme, were released at a lake on Mike and Jane Camm's Tutukaka property.
This is the 10th year captive-bred brown teal, or pateke, have been released at Tutukaka and the sight of them locally is no longer a novelty. The programme, which is supported by Tutukaka Landcare Coalition (TLC), Department of Conservation, and Ngatiwai, has a 70 per cent survival rate.
Children from Ngunguru School were on hand to watch yesterday's release.
In Northland some naturally sustained populations have survived in the wild between Mimiwhangata and Russell, hence the name Teal Bay.
Brown teal have disappeared in many regions but used to be found throughout New Zealand except for the Southern Alps.
They are being reintroduced in the hundreds in suitable habitats where predator control programmes are in place.
The Brown Teal Recovery Group's captive breeding management co-ordinator, Kevin Evans, was on board when the birds were air-freighted into Whangarei from Christchurch.
The banded birds had been bred from eggs collected in Northland, and among hundreds of chicks raised at 20 centres around the country this year.
Mr Evans, from Ruawai, was returning from the release of 100 brown teal in the Arthur Valley near Milford Sound earlier this week. Last year 200 birds were released into the wild, and the same number will be freed this year. The next release will be 30 young birds at Purerua near Kerikeri in August.
The breeding programme's birds are always sent to Peacock Springs, near Christchurch, for pre-release checks and banding.
For more on the brown teal, see the Northern Advocate's Saturday feature section.