Time

On the Otago Peninsula, kākā chatter, ancient lizards hatch their eggs, and baby kiwis fatten up to fighting weight in a predator-free sanctuary.

“It’s the same thing as the Australian parrots are facing; we’ve cut down the big trees with the holes they need.” “But he found them and we’ve been managing them carefully since.” “They were probably the first tuatara to hatch successfully on the mainland South Island for four to 600 years,” says Davies-Colley. “We’ve had them eat possum poison, drown in water tanks that people have left open, and eat cat poo and get toxoplasmosis.” I stumble on a flock of these bold and sociable birds in a fury of activity: chattering, clattering and clawing their way down the branches of a longsuffering tree. “People probably thought he was nuts,” says Davies-Colley. An “incursion” in 2015 saw a pack of search dogs brought in to locate the killer stoats, which they did. “Tūī,” he says. Aotearoa’s third-largest island “would be the biggest island to have been made predator-free in the world,” says Davies-Colley. “Can I hear what?” I reply. “See that wobbling leaf?” he says. “What was that?” I say.