Who needs Netflix when you’ve got the secret lives of local wildlife to watch? From kiwi showing off their tiny wings to a bittern gulping down an eel, Kerikeri Peninsula trail cameras capture the raw, unfiltered drama of the animal kingdom.

It all started with a kiwi scrap
Northland’s Bay of Islands is a total hot spot for kiwi.
Waking up to their screeching calls or finding poop on the back deck is not uncommon for Kerikeri Peninsula residents.
But one night, their antics reached a new level when two kiwi decided to duke it out right outside Dean Wright’s bedroom window.
“It happened three nights in a row. The third night we were prepared with a red head torch and a DSLR camera,” says Dean. They captured this epic footage of the kiwi having a scrap on the lawn. It’s fascinating footage: kiwi not bumbling about in the dark but territorial, vocal and brimming with personality.
The idea struck: if this was happening in plain sight on the back lawn, imagine what’s going on when we couldn’t see.

Gadgets behind the magic

When the Kerikeri Peninsula Charitable Conservation Trust (KPCCT) launched seven years ago, the regional council lent them a couple of trail cameras.
The group immediately put them out, and the footage didn’t disappoint — one of the first clips captured a kiwi chick waddling through the bush with its parents.
Today, 250 properties, 110 active trappers and 28,000 fewer predators later, the group has about 20 trail cameras in rotation.
The Brownings and Cuddlelinks cameras are moved around the reserves and properties under their protection.
They are hardy devices strapped to trees, strategically placed near trails, traps, waterholes, and other spots that critters like to visit.
Motion-activated and infrared-equipped, they can see in the dark and have become indispensable, revealing a side of the peninsula that most people don’t see.
The drama of the night
Sometimes, the footage is quirky, like the kiwi showing off his tiny winglets (viewed nearly 1 million times) or another jumping up high to avoid spiky blackberry bushes. In this rare footage, the secretive and nationally critical matuku-hūrepo (Australasian bittern) gulps down an entire eel.
Other times, they show introduced predators. “They are invaluable to know what we’re not catching,” says Dean.
For instance, the lure in a Steve Allen SA2 possum trap kept vanishing, but no possum was caught. A strategically placed trail camera soon revealed rats were squeezing in under the trigger and eating the sweet, blue Smooth lure paste.
“A couple of our cams picked up two large roaming dogs multiple nights on a property with kiwi. The dogs were kilometres away from home. We were able to trace the owners and get dog control involved,” he recalls.
Pets are an ongoing challenge for wildlife on the Kerikeri Peninsula. Wandering and off-lead dogs find the smell of kiwi irresistible, and as kiwi have no breastbone, even a gentle, playful squeeze by a dog can kill them.

To combat this, KPCCT provides guidelines for dog owners living in the kiwi zone and runs a kiwi avoidance training session for locals.
KPCCT stepped things up a notch by purchasing the DOC AI cam. This advanced tech from Cacophany 2040 combines a thermal camera and audio bird monitor. Thermal videos and audio recordings are analysed by AI robots to automatically identify birds and predators, making monitoring a whole lot easier, especially in areas with pests at low densities.

“It’s a repeatable system, saves analysis time and allows us to identify pest hotspots,” Dean says.
The cameras are also a tool to engage the community. They rotate around community properties, and people love seeing “their” kiwi.
“When you show someone a video of a kiwi on their own property, it changes how they see conservation – it’s no longer abstract, happening somewhere else, it’s right in their backyard,” says Dean.
“The stories, reports and videos keep us motivated.” Every piece of footage reminds them why their efforts matter, whether it’s cute kiwi antics or a reminder of the threats they face.
For helpful advice on how to set up and use trail cameras, check out our YouTube video.
For a deep dive into comparing trail cameras, the Department of Conservation published a paper: Trail cameras and thermal cameras: a comparative analysis for prospective users (PDF, 550 KB).