A bird in the hand
You’ll use eight of the videos on your DVD in this unit where the focus is on the recovery and protection of five very special birds – the takahe, kakapo, Chatham Island black robin, kokako and the Northern Royal albatross.
Each video can also be found on the DOC or TVNZ website and the link to video is part found in the learning activities. Videos used are:
Takahe Champion
Takahe release
Saving the kakapo
Black Robin
The man who saved the black robin
Kokako
Kokako translocation ( Bringing kokako back to their ancestral home.)
Toroa (The Northern Royal Albatross)
You’ll also find links to websites and learning tools which provide practical activities to develop your students’ knowledge and skills. Background information is also provided within the learning activities and the answers are there too.
Years: 7, 8 and 9
Levels: 3 and 4
Science Achievement objective
Living world
Students will:
(Ecology)
Explain how living things are suited to their particular habitat and how they respond to environmental changes both natural and human induced.
Social Studies supporting achievement objective
Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges.
Technology supporting achievement objective
Explain the nature of an intended outcome explaining how it addresses the need or opportunity.
Learning outcomes
Students will:
1. Explain how the adaptive features of some of New Zealand’s most endangered birds are now contributing to their downfall.
2. Complete a chart to show what knowledge, skills and actions a species recovery programme needs and the reasons behind such actions.
3. Use story board techniques to plan a short video that provides a useful snapshot of a takahe recovery programme.
4. Choose the best ongoing recovery plan for a critically endangered bird from a list of options by considering the consequences of each option.
5. Design a technological system that could help solve a problem that is putting endangered birds at risk.
Assessment activity
Choose from the activities in the unit.
Teaching and Learning Activities
Starter 1
Introduced predators, hunting and fire have decimated New Zealand’s bird populations. Share the story below with your students without telling them the name of the bird. It’s the huia.
Sir Walter Buller, who had been brought up in New Zealand and became extremely knowledgeable about New Zealand birds, wrote this story in 1867 during a search for a very special bird.
We heard her soft flute-note in the wooded gully far beneath us. One of our native companions at once imitated the call, and in a few seconds a pair of beautiful birds, male and female, appeared in the branches near us. They remained gazing at us only for a few instants, and then started off up the hill, moving by a succession of hops, often along the ground, the male generally leading. Waiting until he could get both birds in a line, my friend at length pulled trigger….
Decide in class why the birds were shot and then share the poem on this Who am I?
Students can then use the clues to work out which bird it is. When they think they have the right bird, check terranature. http://www.terranature.org/extinctBirds.htm
Discuss likely reasons for other New Zealand birds becoming extinct and read some of the examples on terranature again to find out more about those extinct birds. http://www.terranature.org/extinctBirds.htm
Starter 2
The takahe
Watch Takehe Champion and see what Sophie’s doing to help save a species that could have joined New Zealand’s extinct bird list. It shows how one young person met a challenge and made a difference.
After the video, list these things in class:
· The need Sophie recognised,
· The mission she set herself that she believed would help the takehe,
· The questions she probably needed answered as she began her investigation
· Her solution which in the end helped the takahe.
In groups have the students compile a ‘high five’ bird list – five of New Zealand’s native birds that they think may have needed human intervention to help ensure their survival.
Add the challenge of listing birds from different habitats- e.g. the forest, coast, wetlands, fast flowing rivers, tussock country, high country.
Share the lists as a class, compile a master list and circle the five birds we’ll focus on through the videos - the takehe, kokako, kakapo, black robin and Royal Northern albatross.
Explain that all these birds have suffered, then benefited by human intervention. The same groups can choose one of the birds and from what they already know, they should list:
· A need
· A mission that could be done that might possibly help the bird.
· Some questions that would have to be answered first- the investigation
· A likely solution.
Collect these ideas for later use. After seeing the videos the students’ ideas may change.
3. Takahe were thought to be extinct until rediscovered in 1948. They’re ground nesting birds so like the kiwi that lose 90% of their chicks in the wild, takahe chicks are also easy prey for stoats.
Before you watch the video Takahe Release, touch on these things in class:
· What are the different habitats for New Zealand’s native birds?
· What special adaptations do our birds have for:
- Flight? (Think of fantails, hawks and albatross.)
- Swimming and diving? (e.g. ducks’ oily and waterproof cover and penguin feathers which become a sleek fine fur)
- Hunting and feeding? (e.g. sharp talons, curved beaks to tear flesh or short sharp beaks for feeding on seeds.)
· What physical adaptations do the flightless birds like takahe have? (Study the photo) http://www.nzbirds.com/birds/takahe.html
· Have takahe adapted in any way to the presence of new enemies like stoats?
· Takahe were thought to be extinct but were rediscovered in 1948. What might be the reason behind a small population surviving?
4. Watch Takahe release - it’s an episode on your DVD. Get your students to look for three things as they watch:
· The suitability of the place the Takahe chicks grew up in. (It’s on Tiritiri Matangi, a predator free island.) http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-doc/news/meet-the-locals-videos/third-series/tiritiri-matangi/
· The unique habitat these birds are being introduced into.
· The teacher the chicks needed in their new home.
Discuss those questions in class after viewing the video and then decide how important the intervention is for the survival of takahe.
5. The core population of takahe is found in the Murchison Mountains, an area that’s seen a summer plague of stoats. The amount of land trapped will increase from 15,000 to 50,000 hectares so this makes this recovery programme a huge operation.
Action for Recovery will help students link the groups, their skills and actions required if an operation like this is to succeed.
Try the activity in groups and then “jigsaw”. Get each person in the group to move to a different group to share ideas. Discuss the findings in class.
6. The kakapo
The Kakapo Recovery Plan is a joint partnership between DOC and Forest and Bird. The catch cry on their website is:
6 billion people on earth
Only 124 kakapo
Time is critical
Share the catch cry with your students and get them to design a home page for a Kakapo Recovery Plan web site. The aim is not for a work of art but content and design that will grab people, inform them and get them involved. Work in small groups sketching the design on a large sheet of paper.
Their home page needs:
· A headline and attention grabbing subtitle
· A picture (Show its location and describe the photo you would put there)
· The page link buttons that clearly show what will be found on the pages.
· The front page feature that shows in a creative way, what people in the field are doing to help.
Share the ideas in class and then introduce the actual Kakapo Recovery Plan website.
7. Use the Kakapo Recovery Plan website now.
Students should research one of the bullet pointed aspects below and present an oral report to the class. Together they will build knowledge of kakapo, the recovery programme and the people that make it work.
From Then and Now
· Iwi perspective
· Decline and Turning the tide
· Codfish Island and Anchor Island
From Meet the Kakapo
· Breeding
· Getting Around and Behaviour
· Life Cycle
From Meet the People
· The National Kakapo team - focus on the skills they have.
From What we do
· Intensive monitoring
· Health checks
· Predator control
· Supplementary feeding
· Artificial Incubation and hand feeding
· Research 1 Kakapo genetic studies (tricky!)
· Research 2 Supplementary feeding
· Technology 1 The nest kit
· Technology 2 The snark
8. Now that your students are experts, get small groups to design a storyboard for a 4 minute Meet the Locals video at Codfish Island. Which bits would they include? Which bits would they leave out if they wanted to provide the best possible snapshot of the kakapo recovery programme?
This video planner will help.
9. Now watch the Meet the Locals episode- Saving the Kakapo It’s an episode on your DVD http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-doc/news/meet-the-locals-videos/fourth-series/saving-the-kakapo/
10. The Chatham Islands Black Robin
While the kakapo recovery is amazing, the Chatham Islands Black Robin came even closer to extinction. By 1980 there were only five birds left in the world. Two of these were females and only one produced fertile eggs.
Locate the Chathams Island area with this distribution map of the black robin. It’s on page 6 of this recovery plan.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/documents/science-and-technical/TSRP40.pdf
Discuss how the black robins were once found on all the islands.
· By 1872 when the species was first encountered by European observers it had already disappeared from Chatham Island.
· For several decades prior to the species dramatic rescue in 1976 the whole of the world’s black robin population was on Tapuaenuku (Little Mangere), a tiny cliff bound island in the Chathams.
· Black Robins are currently on two small islands- Mangere and Rangitira ( South East island.
Try Match the threats. This activity looks at how numbers got so low with a focus on how the little bird’s way of life was so easily threatened by the trimmings of human settlement.
11. Watch the Meet the Locals video Black Robin. It’s one of the episodes on your DVD. http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-doc/news/meet-the-locals-videos/fifth-series/black-robin/
Get the students to look for two key things:
· Why Little Mangere was the only island with black robins by 1970.
· How Wildlife staff managed to build the population from 5 in 1980 to over 250 by 2000.
Discuss those two points after watching the video.
12. In groups and on large pieces of paper students can draw a flow chart of the early stages of the black robin recovery plan but share this information too.
· Members of Forest and Bird helped buy Mangere Island and plant 12,000 trees there so the black robin would have a healthier forest home.
· At first, Chatham Island warblers were used as foster parents, but they couldn’t keep up with the feeding when the chicks hatched. Tomtits made far better foster parents.
· Unfortunately the young black robins started to think they were tomtits! They sang tomtit songs and didn’t pair with other black robins.
· The young birds were returned to the black robin nest for the last few days of living in the nest… to learn to behave like black robins should!
Look here to see a Tomtit feeding black robin chicks! http://www.kcc.org.nz/birds/blackrobin.asp
13. Get to know Old Blue, the common ancestor of every black robin alive today, through the eyes of Don Merton, the man who set up the recovery programme for the Chatham Island black robin.
Study the consequences of each of the “remarkable” and “lucky” things that happened. Decide if the Chatham Island black robin would still be around today if any one of these events did not happen.
14. Now watch The man who saved the black robin and meet Don Merton.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-doc/news/meet-the-locals-videos/fourth-series/the-man-who-saved-the-black-robin/
And here’s Don Merton catching a black robin. http://www.teara.govt.nz/TheBush/Conservation/ConservationAHistory/7/ENZ-Resources/Standard/4/en
15. By 1999, 254 black robins were alive. What next for the black robin looks at three options for the next stage of the recovery plan. Using choices and proposed actions from DOC’s actual recovery plan students consider the options and consequences of actions and choose the option they would follow.
Discuss these words before you start:
· revegetation ( A new forest derived in part from the planting of 120,000 rooted cuttings taken from local stock, is regenerating on Mangere Island)
· consequences
· monitoring
(Answer: DOC chose option B. Black robins currently live on Rangatira (South East) Island and Mangere Island in the Chatham Islands group. Attempts made to establish another population in a fenced convenant on Pitt Island have failed, possibly due to competition for food with introduced mice. You can find DOC’s whole recovery plan here.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/birds/land-birds/black-robin/facts
16. Kokako
In Maori mythology it was the kokako that brought Maui water when he fought the sun. The kōkako filled its wattles with water and brought it to Maui. His thirst quenched, Maui rewarded the kōkako by making its legs long and slender, enabling the bird to bound through the forest with ease in search of food.
Tell the class the story - here’s one version of Maui and the sun and then share the part the kokako played in the story.
Discuss how this adaptation for life in the forest, bounding through the trees rather than flying left the kokako vulnerable as soon as ship rats arrived. http://www.connovation.co.nz/rodents.html These excellent climbers do more damage to the forest than Norway rats.
17. Find out more about the kokako by watching the kokako video. It’s one of the episodes on your DVD.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-doc/news/meet-the-locals-videos/first-series/kokako/
Pukaha - Mt Bruce has an intensive trapping programme in place. There’s a small predator proof fence to protect the takahe chicks but there is not a fence around the whole area. Discuss this in groups and see if the students can come up with the reasons why the Mt Bruce area isn’t surrounded by a fence.
Answer: Restoring threatened wildlife to mainland New Zealand can’t be done on a large scale by protecting them behind predator proof fences. At Mt Bruce it’s been possible to successfully reintroduce species that were once locally extinct.
This is an important conservation education message and New Zealanders are doing this right around the country. Let’s look at another example.
18. Nga Whenua Rahui is a government fund that can be used for conservation projects that will protect indigenous ecosystems on Maori land. http://www.doc.govt.nz/getting-involved/landowners/nga-whenua-rahui/nga-whenua-rahui-fund