Auckland woman Sasha Maya can be excused for believing the guiding hand of her long dead grandfather played a part in the arrival of a unique all-white kiwi chick at Pukaha Mt Bruce.
Mrs Maya and her daughter Ayoka, 6, had planned to visit the National Wildlife Centre for months and just days before they did so the little chick, now named Manukura, arrived.
But what made that extra special is that Mrs Maya is the granddaughter of Elwyn Welch, the Mt Bruce farmer and ornithologist credited with starting the ball rolling by taking four takahe chicks to his farm way back in 1958, to safeguard the species from extinction.
That action led to the New Zealand Wildlife Service taking over the work from Mr Welch in 1962 and subsequently to the establishment of Pukaha Mt Bruce.
For Mrs Maya the arrival of Manukura seemed heaven sent as she never had the chance to meet her granddad, who died when her mother was only 9 years old, and to be on hand with her own daughter to see Manukura weighed and fed on Friday was an emotional experience.
"I just kept thinking what my grandfather would have thought with myself and Ayoka being here to see the only known white kiwi."
The two Auckland visitors were certainly not alone on Friday as the viewing area of the kiwi house filled up with visitors from near and far.
Families arrived from Gisborne, the Kapiti Coast and Waikato.
Some had planned to visit anyway, others made the trip only on hearing of the white kiwi chick and others were passing and made a spur of the moment decision to call in and see Manukura.
Meanwhile, Manukura is making good progress, gaining weight at the rate of around 10g a day.
He or she - the sex has not been determined yet - weighed in at 304g on Friday, satisfying DoC captive breeding ranger Darren Page that the new arrival was doing as well as the other chicks he cares for.
Like all chicks Manukura survived on the contents of the egg sac for the first five days but is now fed a captive chick's diet - a mixture of ground ox heart, vitamins, vegetable and ground cat biscuits.
Proof that the little kiwi's arrival captured wide attention, and not only in New Zealand, comes with an assessment of website traffic with 80,000 hits in the first three days after the announcement of Manukura's hatching.
And a short on-line video produced by Pukaha Mt Bruce was viewed 52,000 times over the same time.
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