Under the guidance of teacher Laurie Webb, the incident grew to a three-year exploration that has covered native species, the habitat they need and the creation of a bird sanctuary within the school's own grounds.
The latest goal is to work alongside others including local iwi, bringing the students' enthusiasm and knowledge about establishing habitat for native birds to an island offshore of the Coromandel.
"We did a piece of persuasive writing about why we need an island sanctuary here, maybe on Hauturu (Clark) Island Whangamata," says Maisie Dyer.
Teacher Laurie says the school is interested to work with others on such an undertaking.
In the meantime, the students are exceptional guides to their new bird sanctuary in the school grounds.
Georgia Trebilco says inspiration to build the nature garden led to everyone choosing a species to learn more about.
"About two years ago we didn't have many birds in our native area so we wanted to bring more native species back to Opoutere. We started off with a bird count around our natives."
Eleanor Dyer says the research always had a purpose.
"We also researched pests and made little tracking tunnels to survey pest activity. We noticed the habitat to try and bring them back and make it easier for them so they would have what they needed."
Added India Kennings: "We noticed that in building huts in the native area, we were wrecking the little seedlings in it. It was stumping their growth and not letting trees grow. That's why we built this, we wanted the little kids not to trample over the native plants.
"Now they can come in and listen to the birds from within the bird hide."
Marlee Jacobs said the students had expert help like Beccy Dove from Enviroschools and a nursery in Waihi that gave advice on the right plants for the area, as well as help from members of the local Wharekawa Catchment Care group.
"Just after we organised the plants, it was cool to add the pou," Marlee said of the structure at the garden entrance.
Marlee lives close by to the school and is amazed at the difference.
"We've seen more kererū, more tūī, heaps of other birds we've never seen before, it's pretty cool. You can notice a difference in the sound, you can hear them without having to tune in. When you live here, you can hear them at night, they put me to sleep."
Katie Tempelmeyer, Eleanor and Maisie Dyer show a model of their island bird sanctuary idea. Photo / Alison Smith
The students built morepork houses to encourage more back into the area and ensure diversity of bird species.
"Morepork get the pests, they like eating rats and mice," says Wairaraua Noa Paul.
Added Seb Gleeson: "We're trying to get more in because they're also really good for eating the seeds and dispersing them. We did lots of research on birds like that."
Just before lockdown the students visited the island bird sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi Island and returned amazed and inspired.
"We got back and were given a project to design the perfect habitat for native species," said Eleanor.
"We would create a habitat on an island that would suit them. For example, if you had penguins you would have hutches by the shore. Tūī would have kōwhai trees, and takahē, ideally, lots of shrubs and flaxes for cover. The birds need insects too, so we'd have rotting logs.
"This garden area was ideal because we had a big rotting log here already. We also made caves for wētā and tuatara. With insects, birds thrive."
Said Maisie Dyer: "We were thinking we were going to move the log out, but learned it's worked out so well for insects."
Lockdown meant the students carried on their research from home. Elliot New said just before lockdown, the students had managed to get new seedlings to regenerate their sanctuary "and make our native area more native".
In the bird hide at the Opoutere School bird sanctuary created by the Year 10 students. Photo / Alison Smith
At this point they made a path and bird hide to watch the birds from.
Asked what sort of challenges they had, Georgia said weeds were a big one.
"I think we picked the hardest part of the school grounds. We knew what weeds were, and we were looking at jasmine. It was all around the trees, killing them. We had to completely get rid of it by hand. The jasmine had killed a few big trees so we had to chop them down."
They say they did not realise the potential in the area when starting out.
