Two young ruru are being groomed at the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park for a life working with the public. Photo supplied
Two young morepork owls in training at the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park are behaving like unruly teenagers.
Ni and Nox are being groomed for life in the public eye, flying to targets in front of visitors to the expanded and redeveloped kiwi house.
The ruru have hit puberty and were a little bit rebellious, kiwi house manager Jo Russell said.
The owls were hatched at the kiwi house and hand reared by handler Mat Ronaldson, who fed them several times a day and night.
“He’s really the dad to Ni and Nox,” Jo said. “They are a little bit stand-offish with him at the moment. When they hit puberty, like any animal, they are a little bit rebellious. They don’t want to know you now.”
Even though the moreporks were a little unpredictable, they would keep on working with Ni and Nox, Jo said.
“For us, it’s always by choice. They are motivated by reward. Everything is positive reinforcement. Sometimes you just can’t positively reinforce a teenage ruru.”
A previous Ōtorohanga-hatched morepork flew off to a new life at Queenstown’s kiwi park, where she is known as Molly the Morepork.
“We’ve hatched quite a few here for people to hand rear for advocacy,” Jo said.
The two males, Ni and Nox, are named after their species, Ninox Novaeseelandiae.
“Their training regime is not just for the show. It’s a really good way of keeping them fit, helping them manage their own health,” Jo said.
“Anything we are doing is making sure the animal is carrying out the normal range of behaviour and it’s making sure they are carrying out their own health care.
“It’s all about taking the stress off them. When we choose a target for them to go to, we are preparing them for when we need to examine their feet or go to a target when we are working with another bird we might want to do a keel check with.”
All birds that fly have a keel bone, where the flight muscles attach. Touching a bird’s keel will show how well their flight muscles are developed and whether a bird is in good body condition.
“When you do that in an enclosure or a habitat with other animals, you kind of have to send the others to the target so you can work with the one you want to. There’s quite a bit to it. One of the most important things is training animals to go into a crate voluntarily for a reward.
“We want to move away from having to net them. It’s very stressful for the keeper, and for the animals.”
They train each bird to respond to either a colour or a gesture, so each bird has its own symbol.
“What we are encouraging is for them to show us how they fly, so we can monitor how their balance is, how their movement is. You learn a lot about an owl, about its ability to manoeuvre.
“Sometimes we want to set up an obstacle course, just to see how well it’s able to manage that, how well it’s able to use its binocular vision to track in on something. There’s quite a bit to it. Because they are a bird of prey, we want to ensure that they have that stimulus.”
They are fed mainly on locusts bred for them on site.
“It’s really important to keep their brains engaged; that gives them a really good mental state,” she said.
This included foraging on the ground, hunting and catching food on the wing.
“I think they are all more intelligent than we give them credit for; they are absolutely honed at what they are in the environment to do. To watch ruru on the wing catching something like a long-tailed bat –they are incredible at what they do.
“They have an incredible sense of hearing. Those lovely rounded feathers mean they fly absolutely silently. Unlike other birds where they are making noise, it’s really important for the morepork to be a stealth bomber.”
Ni and Nox are expected to be ready for the public later in spring, towards summer, Jo said.
