Willowbank and KoTane

Last week we visited as place called Willowbank.  It is a zoo where they have animals that are native to New Zealand, animals that the settlers brought with them on purpose and some other interesting animals.  Do you know what native means? It means something that was already here in New Zealand before the British settlers came and was not brought here.  The only native mammals to New Zealand were 2 kinds of bats.  Everything else was brought here by the settlers.

The Puekeko or swamp hen

We saw animals like wallabies, kiwi birds and pukeko.  We also saw deer and a peacock (my little sister calls it a pea pot) in the farm animal part.  We even saw some eels and black swans.  Eels are long, black, thick and slimy looking like a water snake.  The biggest one was about 6 inches thick and 1.5 meters long-yuck!  Also we saw some Keas.  Keas are alpine parrots.  They are the only alpine parrots in the world.  Their feathers are green with orange underneath of their wings.  Keas love honey so the zookeepers used honey to attract them to our group.  One Kea came and landed next to me and bit me on the hand and elbow.  Geeze those beaks are sharp!   

The kea or alpine parrot

The cheeky kea that bit me!

My sister's "pea pot"

The kiwi is the national bird of New Zealand.  The people of New Zealand are also sometimes called kiwis.  It has a long beak and cannot fly.  Their egg is about 6 times the size of a chicken egg.  The egg makes up about ¼ of a females body weight.  It is the equivalent of a human giving birth to a 5 year old child.  Kiwis are endangered in New Zealand.  They are endangered in New Zealand because animals like stoats and weasels that the settlers brought, eat them.  Because the animals that the settlers brought with them have no predators to eat them, their numbers keep growing.  Also, cats and dogs eat kiwis too.  They showed us a picture of a dog that got loose from his owner and attacked and killed 500 kiwis.  Kiwi birds are nocturnal which means they are awake at night and sleep during the day.  Willowbank collects eggs from the wild and incubates them as well as breeds kiwi birds to release back into the wild.

Doing the hongi

Chief Justin picking up the offering

After the kiwis we saw and participated in an event called KoTane (Co-tah-nay).  KoTane is a Maori traditional welcome and concert.  The Maori are the native people of New Zealand.  A Maori warrior greeted us and challenged us with a spear to see if we came in peace or for war.  After our chief (Mommy’s student Justin) picked up the offering (a fern) and they knew we came in peace, our chief and their Maori chief greeted each other with a hongi (hong-gee), a Maori greeting in which two people press their foreheads and their noses together to share the breath of life.  We then were invited inside for a Maori concert. 

The women of the tribe welcoming us with the powhiri

Me doing the haka

Maori men doing the haka

Maori women doing the poi dance

The boys got to participate in a haka, a traditional Maori war dance.  I also participated in the haka(Hah-kah).  We stomped our feet, stuck out our tongues, and slapped our knees and our chests with our hands.  Even the New Zealand national rubgy team the All Blacks perform the haka in front of their opponents before each game.  You can find it on You Tube to watch yourself by clicking on this link All Blacks Haka vs. England Then the girls did the poi dance.  The poi are white balls on a rope.  Traditionally they were made with rocks and flax.  They swung the poi right and left, forward and backward and up and down while singing.  We then had a traditional Maori dinner called a hangi which means that the dinner was cooked in a hole in the ground for many hours.  We had lamb, pork belly and chicken and lots of kinds of vegetables.  It was good.

Our whole group

 My favorite things at Willowbank were touching the eels and seeing the kiwi birds.