Meeting Baby Sequoia

04 Feb Meeting Baby Sequoia

It’s not every day that members of a graphic design company get to collect and deliver a baby kiwi to its new home but that’s what happened last week when tgm’s Andrea Leadbetter and David Reilly along with their two children, James and Catherine, drove to Rotorua to collect four-month-old Sequoia on behalf of Experience Pūrangi.

“Little did we know that when we offered to help Experience Pūrangi with some signage and brochures that we’d get the chance to see, touch and learn so much about our national bird,” says tgm’s Andrea Leadbetter.

Sequoia is a Taranaki kiwi, who was incubated and hatched at the National Kiwi Hatchery Aotearoa in Rotorua after his father’s faulty transmitter was investigated and his nest disturbed.

The four-hour trip from the hatchery centre required a cool, quiet, carefully driven car.

“Anyone who knows us well knows the cool car and the careful driving is a given, but the requirement for quiet was a challenge for our family,” jokes Andrea.

Sequoia will spend one night in a burrow near to Experience Pūrangi’s base on Karen and Bob Schumacher’s farm then he’ll be on his own.

“We learnt that baby Kiwi, like many birds, are independent from birth but baby kiwi are particularly vulnerable to predators,” says Andrea.

Lucky for Sequoia with ETET’s extensive trapping programme the threat of predators has been lessened for him and the other 4500 Kiwi living in the 13,000-hectare project area.