I'm still hoping to see one of these birds for myself one day, especially since they're literally just down the road — Saving Tara-iti shell by shell: 🐦
On an overcast winter's day at Bream Bay, about 20 people are doing something that, at first glance, seems a little odd.
They are shovelling shells into hessian sacks and moving them from one part of the beach to another. But the painstaking work has a purpose: creating safe places for tara-iti, New Zealand fairy tern, to nest.
There are only about 45 of the birds left, making the subspecies one of New Zealand's rarest endemic breeding bird.