Rare white-feathered kiwi chick named after Ashley Bloomfield
A rare three-day-old kiwi chick has been named Bloom, after director general of health Ashley Bloomfield, following a call for name suggestions from viewers of TVNZ’s Breakfast.
The chick, born at Rotorua’s Rainbow Springs Nature Park to parents Trev and Shirl, has rare white feathers on its stomach.
Rainbow Park’s Emma Bean told TVNZ reporter Sam Kelway they hadn’t seen a chick with such markings for three years, and the last before then was born in 2007.
“It is really quite rare to have this amount of white feathering,” she said.
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It wouldn’t be a great trait in the wild as it would make the kiwi more visible to predators, but this wouldn’t be an issue in Bloom’s protected environment.
Breakfast was invited to name the chick to mark the start of Save Kiwi Month, happening in October.
In a Facebook post this morning, viewers were asked to give their name suggestions.
Over 200 people commented with their ideas.
Many of the suggestions were Māori, with several appearing more than once, including Aroha, the te reo word for love, and Atawhai, which means kindness.
Several viewers also thought Hope and Fern were good names, and a few suggested Covid.
One thought the chick should be named Elvis as it was “RotoVegas’s little superstar”.
Short-listed names were put into a container and Kelway drew “Bloom” during the live broadcast this morning.
“This is really quite fitting, isn’t it,” he said. “The name for the little kiwi is Bloom after Ashley Bloomfield.”
He said the name symbolised “new growth and fresh starts.”
Bean said the kiwi was “quite wriggly and feisty, doing all the right things a kiwi should.”
That included probing the veins in her arms as she held it, demonstrating a kiwi’s instinct to hunt for invertebrates.
This isn’t the first time a native bird has been named after the director general of health, who had developed something of a cult following during the coronavirus pandemic.
In June, staff at Dunedin Wildlife Hospital named a rescued kea Bloomfield.
A Botswanan baby rhinoceros was also named after the doctor; it is called Ashley Bloomfield.
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