Willowbank Wildlife Reserve

On Monday afternoon, post-lunch, we headed over to the wildlife reserve to walk through the "zoo", have a guided Kiwi tour and experince some native Maori culture. The first thing we did was walk through two of the three different sections of the reserve, Wild New Zealand and Heritage New Zealand (our guided tour was of the third section, Natural New Zealand). Wild New Zealand was my favorite because it had more exoctic animals, the ones that were brought in from other countries and now live here, such as wallabies, deer, lemurs, monkeys, etc. All of the animals were so adorable and I took tons of pictures! Heritage New Zealand is the section of farm animals such as miniture horses, peacocks, goats, cattle, etc. I am not sure how peacocks classify into farm animals but I guess the do here in New Zealand! Once we walked through those two sections we had some time before our Kiwi tour so I spent some time in the gift shop getting some gifts for people at home and even something for myself, towels for my kitchen! The tour of the Natural New Zealand section was really cool becasue the guide was able to tell us all about the animals we were seeing. One of my favorites was the Kea which is a very clever alpine bird. Our guides had honey which attracts them and they sat on some people shoulders! They also knew a few commands, "hold your beak" where they held their beak with one of their feet and "wings" where they stretched out their wings. There was one bird who was only putting out one wing and the guide told him "no, properly" and he understood that too! We learned a lot about the Kiwi, which is a native nocturnal bird that are actually bigger than I expected. They are a little bit larger than a chicken and I was expecting a fairly small bird. They mate for life and lay 1 to 3 eggs a year. The egg is very large and takes up about 20-25% of the female's body weight, the human equivalent of giving birth to a five year old! The kiwi is very endangered becuase many animals that were introduced to the islands like to prey on them and they really don't have a defense mechanism. The wildlife reserve takes part in a breeding program where they not only have 3 pairs of kiwi's breeding at the reserve but they also take eggs from the wild hatch the chicks and grow them up for about a year and then release them exactly where they found them. The first part of the kiwi's life is the hardest so if they can be grown up and then released to start their own family there is a higher chance of survival. They also use a poison that kills the mammals preying on the kiwis in the parts of the country that no one can get to to set traps (the tops of mountains). Because there is no one up there it only harms the pests, not people or their animals. Because they are nocturnal the ones on display are in the dark so I dont have any good pictures, but they where still really cool to see! After the tour we were involved in something called the Maori Cultural Experience where we got to see how two tribes would interact and learned and observed some of their dances. We picked a chief (Justin) and he was tought how to respond to indicate that "we come in peace" when the native tribe approached him. After that we went into a large "hut" and the men learned the Haka (which is a war dance) and the women learned the Poi (which is a dance done with balls on a string). It was really cool and quite funny to watch and do! They also did some dances and songs for us to watch, one they did with these sticks that the women tossed and passed to each other, it was very interesting to watch. Afterwards we were provided with dinner, which was amazing! There was bread and dips, soup (a very delicious sweet potato and coconut one was what  had), the main meal (buffet style) and very delicious dessert that was this extemely airy cake and ice cream. It was such a great afternoon trip and I learned so much about both the animals and native culture of New Zealand, I am so glad that it was made a part of our trip becuase it wasn't something I would have known to do on my own.

 

My new kitchen towels!!

 

A Kea