15 December 2004

Rare birds now on show at Karori Wildlife Sanctuary

Visitors can now get up close to the birds at Karori Wildlife Sanctuary due to their new ‘Bird Cam’. Through the use of remote camera’s live images of the wildlife are now being relayed to television monitors for Sanctuary visitors to view.

“This is an exciting development for us. The Bird Cam brings together the ability for our visitors to observe our rare birds right up close, to potentially see chicks hatching, and being fed; and it gives our conservation team the ability to monitor and research our birds without having to disturb them regularly – especially over the breeding season when we are constantly keeping an eye on breeding activity”, says Nancy McIntosh-Ward, Chief Executive.

Currently the Bird Cam is featuring a live North Island saddleback nest which has one chick and eggs still to hatch. The Sanctuary reintroduced saddleback, back to its natural environment, for the first time in New Zealand in over 100 years.

It is hoped that the Bird Cam will be operational throughout the year “With nature being in charge, we can’t predict what visitors may see on our monitors but we do hope that we will be able to feature footage throughout the year with most of it being live”.

The Sanctuary is grateful to The Southern Trust who funded the development of the Bird Cam.

All media are invited to join Sanctuary staff and guests at the launch of the Bird Cam on Tuesday 21 December 2004, 4pm at the Sanctuary entrance.

ENDS

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