Motorist rescues injured kaka from side of the road | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

A hardy little kaka is recuperating in Palmerston North after a surprise roadside rescue near his Mt Bruce home late last week.

Campbell McLay said he was driving to work in Masterton when he spotted what he thought was a discarded welding glove on a grass verge near the Ruamahanga River bridge just after 9.30am on Thursday.

"Then I went past and saw the beak and thought, that's not a welding glove. So I pulled over and had a look."

He was lucky to have a neighbour familiar with birds and a pair of rigger's gloves to handle the endangered parrot, which he said was covered in "splashes of red".

Mr McLay was used to seeing the birds - "we've got a couple of them flying around up on our farm".

"It was pretty docile when I picked it up, it didn't panic or anything. I had to grasp it pretty firmly at one point and when I did he really dug into me and had a good go. He must have been in pain."

He phoned the Department of Conservation and later handed the injured kaka over to ranger Jenny Whyte, who took it to a vet.

"It looked to be in pretty reasonable condition," she said.

"I don't think it had any broken bones. It didn't have any adverse injuries and I couldn't see any lacerations.

"It was very sleepy and he responded as if he didn't really seem that freaked out by people.

"The birds are quite stoical so it might have been feeling so crook that it didn't take much notice of us."

After a night in Masterton the kaka was taken to Pukaha Mt Bruce and examined
before being sent to a wild-
life hospital at Massey University.

Ms Whyte said the discovery was "very unusual", given the parrot would be among only 100 living in the area.

"It was the first we've heard of an injured kaka.

"We can't actually say what happened to it - it might just be young and not very clever.

"No one saw it get hit by a car and it could have just eaten a plant it wasn't familiar with.

"We usually get more common pigeons being hit by vehicles. For some reason moreporks are good at flying into windows and harriers hit windscreens from time to time as they scavenge off the road."