"Kiwi" with her new beak

Now that Kiwi is older (12 weeks or so) her beak is turning black and she will soon have a salmon colored face.


Her favorite things are breaking toys and kicking seed on the floor like a chicken. She's learned to compensate for her clipped wing and can fly all over the house anyway. If you let her sit on your shoulder, watch out for your ears!


When she's not sleeping, she's learning lots of new birdy words...we hope she'll start speaking human soon.

We have a baby...

...a baby bird. Here she is at eight weeks making a fuss!




We call her "kiwi" because she likes to eat kiwifruit and is green.

She keeps Kimball's teeth clean...

She is a moustache parakeet and loves her millet...
...and eating her feet.

Mt Cook Christmas

Having Mike and Grace here for Christmas gave us a perfect excuse to head up to Mount Cook ('bout 5 hours drive) where we explored glacier lakes full of icebergs and ate tons of yummy food at the Hermitage buffet with a view (dessert shots of flan and tiramisu...genius!). The Sir Edmund Hillary Museum had just opened with movies on mountaineering and Everest and brand new planetarium. Definitely worth seeing and though not the cheapest, a comfortable place to stay. www.hermitage.co.nz

Christmas morning we opened presents sent from our lovely families and gobbled down homemade almond roca. Then off to Wanaka to sit in the 6 hot tubs and swim in a warm and cool pool while digesting Christmas dinner. Later we got inspired to hike off the rest of our meal and discovered a hidden mountain meadow and lake with a view of waterfalls.

The next day Mike and Grace took a scenic flight out of Queenstown over the fresh snow in the mountains to Fiordland where we met them after their cruise through Milford Sound and took them on a variety pack adventure of mini-hikes and photo ops.