Hihi

This stitchbird (hihi in Māori) is only a few days old. I was helping out with the monitoring of the population during the breeding season, and a big killer of these chicks is mites. So we had to take a few of them out of their nests to de-bug them, as well as taking some blood samples to check if they were healthy.

 

Hihi are pretty rare birds, but they are slowly being reintroduced to the mainland.

 

Latin name: Notiomystis cincta.

Done