Lynda Hallinan

Teaching an old dog new tricks, such as how to avoid endangered kiwi in the bush.

It's the little things that get on your wick in summer. Slow drivers. Fast drivers. Soggy fish and chips. Neighbours in tents throbbing with bass. Aucklanders out of their natural habitat. 

When we bought our wee bach at Tairua, on the Coromandel Peninsula, locals warned us that the house next door hosted legendary summer soirees, but we were unperturbed. We're country people; we do everything at a high decibel, from yelling at the kids to stop yelling at each other, to growling at the dog for raiding the rubbish and arguing over the best strategies for winning at 500 (usually when we're losing). Is it any wonder the tenants next door moved out shortly after this horde of holidaying Hallinans moved in?

Despite its main street location, within walking distance of the pub, our bach is surprisingly peaceful at night. My husband has only had to intervene once this summer, when a bunch of drunken yobbos engaged in a bit of midnight biffo on the footpath out front. "Cut it out," he said, using rather more colourful language. The lads stopped roughing each other up just long enough to size up my husband with a withering, "What are you? Forty or something." (Forty two, to be precise.)

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But randy teenagers, rowdy twentysomethings and sexist septuagenarians who spout Trumpisms aren't the worst sorts of holiday neighbours: that honour goes to the uneducated larrikins who terrorise local birds. Thus, when I saw a notice advertising free kiwi avoidance training sessions for dogs, I took our farm dog along. 

There are four distinct types of North Island brown kiwi, Apteryx mantelli: Northland, Eastern (from Bay of Plenty to Hawke's Bay), Western (Taranaki/Whanganui) and our plucky local Coromandel bird. Unlike their cousins, whose populations number around 8000 each, the Coromandel Brown Kiwi is the rarest of the lot, with only around 1700 birds left in the bush. 

It's not the prettiest of iconic native birds, with its scraggly feathers and feisty temperament, but the brown kiwi could teach us all a thing or two about marital harmony. The birds are famously monogamous and generally mate for life. They will occasionally kick their partner out of their bracken fern beds for non-performance (a failed breeding attempt), but monitoring efforts have shown that of all the eggs laid, only five per cent are popped out by mums with a bit on the side. 

Perhaps that's because the fellas willingly do their share of the domestic duties. Male birds manage the incubation process, sitting on their tush for as long as it takes for the eggs to hatch, and they're also in charge of the creche facilities, caring for the chicks until they're ready to fly - or walk - the  nest 20 days later.

The Whenuakite Kiwi Recovery Area, a 3500 hectare patch of regenerating coastal broadleaf and kauri forest between Tairua and Hot Water Beach, is no place to be a predator. In the 15 years they've been operating, Whenuakite Kiwi Care Group spokesman Arthur Hinds says they've laid 540 traps on more than 50km of trap line and have caught 1511 stoats, 335 feral cats, 240 weasels, 140 hedgehogs and 13 ferrets, plus about 1000 rats a year. Aerial drops of 1080 have also targeted rats and possums, enabling the coastal forest to regenerate along with kiwi numbers; the plucky Coromandel Brown kiwi population has almost doubled since 2000.  

Locals also report seeing - and hearing - more tui, kereru and kaka in the area, not to mention the kiwi's distinctive love calls. "The male has a high pitched whistle," says Arthur, "while the female sounds like she's been out on the turps all night."

When any monitored Whenuakite kiwi dies, it feels like a death in the family. Over the last year, eight were lost. One succumbed to old age, one was hit by a car and six were attacked by dogs. 

Be it a pig hunting hound or a city-slicker shih tzu, all it takes is a few minutes, and a short sharp shock, to teach a dog to keep its distance from nesting kiwi. By the end of the session, my border collie wouldn't even look the taxidermy bird in the eye, let alone approach its feathered nest of electrical probes.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? If only I could use reverse psychology to teach our border collie how to actually catch some of the rabbits on our farm.

 - Stuff