Ajax the Kea Dog by Corey Mosen

Author:Corey Mosen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2018-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

Me and Ajax at Boulder Lake in Kahurangi National Park. PHOTO BY MITCH BARTLETT

CHAPTER EIGHT

KEEPING AN EYE ON KEA

An adult male kea perches on some mountain beech.

Most of the work Ajax and I do is for the Kea Conservation Trust. We’re part of a research team that monitors kea nests throughout the South Island, but we’ve got certain areas that we’re focused on. To start with, the monitoring was used to make sure we were doing our population surveys at the right time: when the birds that have just fledged are learning to fly around the mountain tops, usually in January. Later we realised that the monitoring also gave us a lot of information on predation, how many nests had been successful in the area, and the development of nests and chicks through the year.

Most of the work we do is in the Kahurangi and Nelson Lakes national parks, but we sometimes work in the Hawdon Valley, near Arthur’s Pass, down on the West Coast, around Mount Cook, and a bit in Fiordland. We’ve also started some monitoring down in the Mātukituki Valley near Wānaka. Pretty much wherever kea live, we’ll be out there looking for them.

An average day for Ajax and me starts either at home or in a tent somewhere. If we’re heading into the field from home, I always start early to make the most of the day. Quite often I’ll have the alarm set for around 5 a.m. On mornings when I’m not heading into the hills, Ajax will get up when I get up. But when I have to get up early, he’ll wake up, open his eyes, look up at me, then just put his head back down. If he could talk, he’d be saying, ‘Yeah . . . nah.’ Then he’ll do his best to ignore me and go back to sleep. I know he really wants to come out with me but he also loves his sleep. (In fact, he loves his sleep so much that if he ever wakes me up in the night, I know that I have to get up and let him outside as fast as possible . . . or the results are likely to be very messy indeed. There have been a couple of times when I didn’t get up quite quickly enough. Once he bolted out into the living room as soon as I opened the bedroom door, then vomited on the carpet.)

Eventually, Ajax will wander out to the kitchen after I’ve been mucking around for a while, making coffee and sorting out breakfast. I’ll give him a feed of biscuits to get him ready for the day, and while he’s eating I’ll pack all the gear we need into the truck. Once that’s done, Ajax will jump in the back of the truck and we’re off.

It’s often still dark as we head off from home, so Ajax makes the most of the drive to catch up on some more sleep. The night before we

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