Pukaha Mount Bruce

Mount Bruce is a big bird sanctuary home to many native birds and reptiles too.  Pukaha means strong winds.  Now that the reserve is being looked after, the numbers of pests and predators are being reduced, this however is a never ending task that the reserve rangers are constantly working on.  There have certainly been some good results, in that the reserve is now home to loads of animals and birds that before were on the edge extinction.  The reserve has nine aviaries which are home to sparrow sized orange fronted parakeets, red crowned and yellow crowned parakeets too. It has male and female stitch birds (Hihi) who sing beautiful tunes that make them one of my favourite native birds. Another bird at Mt Bruce is a female kokako named kahurangi . Kahurangi is quite lonely and she was not in her aviary when I visited this year. I was told by her ranger that they are trying to get her to breed with a new male but no success as she doesn’t appear to like his very much but they are hoping that soon there will be baby kokako getting all of the attention.  At the moment the visitors’ attention is focused on the brown and white little kiwis in their dark kiwi house.  Manukuri; the white Kiwi can be seen very easily due to her colour in one of the two enclosures.  In the other is brown kiwi.   Also you can see New Zealand’s living dinosaur, the tuatara. There are 5 Tuatara in mount Bruce and 4 of them are in enclosure and one out in the reserve.  There are also a number of geckos too and one of the coolest birds to see is one of New Zealand’s parrots the kaka. There are 160 thriving at Pukaha mount Bruce and you can see them being feed and see baby chicks.  One of pukaha’s rangers will be there to give you more details about the kaka.  We got some wonderful photos of the Kaka as they are come pretty close to you in the feed area and they are very impressive birds.  The ninth aviary beholds one of New Zealand’s native duck the blue duck (whio) these are one of the highlights at pukaha mount Bruce. There are many things to experience and see with the rangers at hand to answer any questions you many have.  Like seeing the eels getting feed or watching the tuatara getting feed in their enclosure or the kaka feeding.

 

 

 

This is a brown kiwi at pukaha mount Bruce. There is one brown kiwi in the kiwi house and some out in the mount Bruce reserve and this picture was taken out in the reserve. Did you know the kiwi is the only bird with nostrils at the end of its nose? Mount Bruce is a just over an hour drive from Palmerston North over the rangers via the gorge turning at Woodville on to state highway 2. Mt Bruce is about 10 km south of Eketahuna. Mount Bruce is a tourist attraction because it was the first reserve in New Zealand to make the captive breeding programme for threatened species. Mount Bruce was once a big 70 square mile forest but just ten years ago it was silent, with not many trees, but now it is home to many birds, fish and animals.  There are now big rimu, maiti, tree ferns and many more happily growing. Within the Mt Bruce information centre you can also experience the interactive gallery and look and hear what the forest was like millions of years ago and see what has changed since then. Check out the sound of the now extinct moa and huia. Kids can check out the virtual night experiences in the massive rata tree. When you are at mount Bruce stop at takahe café’s outside area look down and see if you can see a takahe!

Mount Bruce is a cool place so remember to stop there!