Ambassador Māia

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Kia ora,

I'm Māia the kea. My name means bold in Māori. Like most kea I love to give things a go and am often curious and a little mischievous.

I am the ambassador that travels all over the place with Shelley the LEARNZ field trip teacher. I love getting out and about on adventures. Even though I'm more at home in the South Island mountains, I am looking forward to heading to a North Island maunga to meet kōkako.

Sign up your ambassador now so I have some company on the field trip.

Mā te wā,

Māia

Monday 18 June

Kia ora,

Our travel didn’t go according to plan today and we ended up being delayed over 7 hours and then having to fly to Auckland instead of Hamilton. This meant we had a long drive south to Pureora. We didn’t see much as it seemed like the entire country was covered in cloud and then it was dark, so I slept most of the way to Pureora.

We knew we were getting close to the village when we were surrounded by forest. Tall trees lined the sides of the road. I’m looking forward to exploring tomorrow and I hope we find a kōkako!

See you in the morning,

Māia.

Tuesday 19 June

Kia ora,

Kea and Kōkako don’t usually get the chance to meet each other so I felt very lucky to meet two North Island Kōkako today. These birds are bigger than I expected and have a healthy appetite for bananas! We caught these kōkako in mist nets by playing recorded kōkako calls to attract them. I wonder if kea would fall for such a trick?

I felt a bit sorry for the kōkako who were taken from their home and moved to Pirongia but it will help boost the numbers of kōkako and these birds seemed pretty happy exploring their new home.

Tomorrow we will find out how Pirongia has been made safe for kōkako and how we can all work together to help improve our local environment.

See you in the morning,

Māia.

Wednesday 20 June

Kia ora,

We headed back out into Pureora Forest today to learn about introduced predators and how we can control them to help kōkako. Kea don’t like predators either, so it was great to see that these animals can be trapped or poisoned to give us native birds a better chance of surviving. I also got to try some five finger which is one of the many plants that kōkako eat. I didn’t find it very tasty!

See you tomorrow,

Māia.

Thursday 21 June

Kia ora,

Bob has led me astray on this field trip. Yesterday he managed to persuade me to follow him into Pureora Forest in search of kōkako. Then we managed to lose Shelley and we didn’t know where we were until Dave came to our rescue. We were able to help Dave track down more kōkako by playing recorded kōkako calls. Tomorrow we are hoping to catch more kōkako to take to Mount Pirongia.

This field trip has been so much fun. I feel so lucky to have seen North Island kōkako and to be able to help such a cool, unique bird.

See you on another field trip soon,

Māia.