A few weeks ago now, we visited Pukaha Mt. Bruce with my sister, her husband and their two little boys.  I put together a long blog post which, as so often happens, was lost when my computer decided to turn itself off (explorer shut down or something like that...).  Anyway, I will try to recreate the post!

Pukaha Mt. Bruce is a Department of Conservation reserve, specifically started for the purpose of captive breeding in order to preserve the kiwi, our most popular native bird.  The reserve also looks after other native birds and houses the elusive tuatara. 

It was difficult to take pictures of the birds as they were amongst bush and too far away, but I will show you what we did get.

Not birds, but the children all found the eel feeding interesting.  These NZ native long fin eel swim all the way to Pacific waters (near Tonga) to spawn.  The larvae return to NZ in the ocean currents. They only breed once in their lifetime and are considered to be a threatened species.

Undoubtedly, the highlight of our day was the Kaka feeding.  The kaka are a cheeky native bird and were lots of fun to observe at feeding time. 

They were fed a spread of jam-water fruit, nuts, veges & seeds.  The kaka know to come to the feeding area at 3pm each day.  We arrived there just before that, and not long after between 30 & 40 kaka came swooping into the feeding green from the trees around us.  They would swoop right across our heads, into the feeding stations. 

They are known to be the "clowns of the forest" as they bicker over their food and tumble through the trees, hanging from their feet or bills.  They were lots of fun!

A kaka nesting box

The takahe are a funny looking bird.  They have beautiful bright coloured feathers though, and came out for viewing this day!

There are less than 200 of these flightless birds left in New Zealand.

These little New Zealand natives are also quite cheeky, and love to spend their lunchtimes rolling down hills ;-)

I must give the credit to Bethany for most of these photos.

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Barb from Harmony Fine Arts was asking me about our winter today.  Yes, we're in the middle of winter here in New Zealand and have experienced several hailstorms and lots of rain in the last couple of weeks.  The sun is shining today, but it is very cold outside, the forecast for today is a high of 9°Celsius and it had been at least 2°C below zero overnight.  We have a lovely fire though and have just recently installed a heat transfer system which is designed to pump the warm air from the living room through ducting in the roof to vents in the bedrooms.  It works really well, our bedrooms are toasty warm at bedtime!  We're not so prepared here in NZ though with things like double glazing & under floor heating, so we probably feel the cold a bit more.

I thought I'd post a map of where we live here in the North Island.  We live in the town of Feilding (pop. 13,500), just north of the city of Palmerston North (population approx. 78,000). My parents live in the largest city, Auckland (pop 1.3 million), a day's drive north of us.  If it snows on the main route through called the Desert Road, Mum will have to take a detour when she comes to stay after baby is born.  We could travel about 2 hrs north to play in the snow, but it's something we've never done with young children...one day!

I hope you can spot Feilding!  It's in the lower central part of the island between Palmerston North & Dannevirke (which isn't as big as it's lettering suggests at a population of around 5500!).