We love our kiwis, our penguins and fantails… but do you know about the bird that booms?

The australasian bittern, Māori name matuku-hūrepo, might be the quirkiest bird that calls our country home; their necks extend like springs, they have razor-sharp beaks, and males assert dominance by producing a low, rumbling ‘boom’.

It’s a secretive species that sits high on the extinction-risk list due to the historical draining of wetlands around the country for farming and urbanisation.

But farmers in Mid Canterbury, and around the country, are working to restore what was lost on their properties.

Arable and livestock farmer Angus McKenzie is one of those farmers putting in the mahi, which bittern advocate Wendy Ambury saw for herself during a visit to the Wairuna property.

Ambury runs the Love Bittern campaign on her own, travelling the country to educate willing farmers and conservationists about the species and their habitats.

“As a kid, I would tell my siblings that the noise they heard in the wetlands was a swamp ghost, so they stayed out.

“That suited me fine, because I wanted it to myself.

“It was years later that I connected that sound to the boom of a bittern.”

She said the ‘boom’ can be heard from as far as two kilometres away.

“It’s so bassy that you can feel the boom coming through the ground, the reeds will move before the sound hits your ears.”

McKenzie drove Ambury to the restored wetland area, not far from the coast, which he’d been planting for several years.

“[The wetlands] were definitely originally there, but they’ve been farmed since,” he said.

“Hopefully all the natives that’ve been planted will flourish.”

Ambury and McKenzie were joined by Mid Canterbury catchment collective coordinator Angela Cushnie for the farm wetland tour.

“A lot of this area was part of the Longbeach swamp, or Coldstream, so it was all swamp.

“And then back in the day, because it was such good farmland, they drained it.”

She said bitterns had once been common throughout the area, so if their habitat returned, they would too.

Farmers like McKenzie, who volunteered their time and labour into reconverting farmland for native wildlife, were invaluable to conservation.

“Angus does an awful lot for the community.

“He really enjoys it too, realises what he’s got here is very special.”

She said more farmers were taking an interest in on-far conservation, which Ambury reiterated.

“Anyone who lives on, and has a connection with the land, wants to see everything right by the land,” Ambury said.

“We don’t have to teach them that, it's inherent.”

She said working independent of conservation groups helped her to build trust with farmers as well.

“A lot of landowners are a little concerned of authorities coming in and finding something special there, so they want to keep things on the down low, in case their control or land use changes as a result.

“So they feel really comfortable when I come with just a focus on bittern, that is my only focus.”

Ambury does the advocacy work out of her own pocket, but meeting face-to-face is essential to her mission.

“As I go, I collect all those stories, gather knowledge and share that with everyone further down the road.”

By Anisha Satya