The Royal albatross colony on Taiaroa Head near Dunedin, is celebrating a milestone.
The 1000th chick has just hatched since the breeding ground was first established back in 1938, causing great excitement for DOC ranger Sharyn Broni, who has been a guardian for nearly 30 years. She said: "It's amazing. it's such a privilege to work with these birds".
Over the years, they've fine tuned the process to ensure maximum success with every egg that's laid. Eggs take 70 days to hatch, and are removed from the nest, to nearby incubators. The parents were given a porcelain egg to nurture, while their offspring were given the best chance of survival.
"Everyone's special, we want as many to fledge as possible," Broni said. "You can't really get attached to all of them because there's so many of them.
"The chicks are just 300g now, but when they're ready to take flight in September, they'll stand a metre high with a 3m wingspan," she said. "They're really large-long-lived birds and they're quite intelligent. They fly around the world in an amazing journey of over 25,000km."
The Conservation Department has started monitoring that journey.
Te Poari a Pukekura Trust spokesperson Shené Holtzhausen said: "It's really good for Te Poari a Pukekura, because it means we now have another set of eyes flying over the ocean, it's valuable knowledge that gets brought back to the trust for us to understand the life force of the birds."
They were giving extra care to the birds who chose to breed in the windswept spot, hoping the colony kept flourishing, with global albatross numbers dropping to 17,000.
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