First kiwi chick on Maungatautari for 100 years

July 2008. Huatahi, the first kiwi chick to hatch on Maungatautari in around 100 years, has reached his first major milestone by weighing-in at exactly 1kg.

Maungatautari Trust's operations manager Pim de Monchy said "He is healthy and putting on regular increments of weight - in fact he has more than doubled his weight and looks more like a mature bird than the little fluffy chick we first saw outside his burrow seven months ago. Huatahi is now classified as a ‘sub adult' which means that he could now fend off stoats if he were unlucky enough to live in a non-protected area. Thankfully though, he is in the pest free southern enclosure on the mountain."

If Huatahi follows the lead from his parents he could be calling for a mate in 12 months time before hatching his own chick in 2010.

14 kiwi all have transmitters
All 14 kiwi on Maungatautari have transmitters attached so that the Trust can discreetly monitor their movements from a distance.

New breeding season
This year's breeding season has just begun. Huatahi's parents Atua and Elmo remain together in the southern enclosure and it is hoped that they will produce more chicks this year.

Maungatautari could eventually ‘house' many hundreds of pairs of kiwi. It is also considered the most significant potential conservation site for a number of New Zealand's endangered wildlife including kokako, saddleback and stitchbird.