Liz Brown has her hands full. She's looking after more than a hundred kucky chicks who've recently hatched. It's a bit of a passion really, I've been doing it for nine years. The black stilt is the world's rarest waiting bird. In the early 1980s, there were just a handful left. The population had almost been wiped out. Thanks to the work of dock rangers like Liz, the eyes of conservation and wildlife trust, the generous donors and volunteers, the kucky population is back from the brink, with 132 adults now living and breeding in the wild. It's really neat to see them being wild birds, which is what they're supposed to be. August saw a record number of kucky. Once raised in captivity, released on the Tasman River near Arachimankuk. Quite often they'll come out of the boxes and they'll fly so high that it almost looks like they can't figure out how to come back down again. For seven weeks, dock rangers like Liz were with the kucky every day, feeding and looking after the young birds, as they adapted to their new home with its spectacular surroundings. They've never been in water deep enough that they've just swim before. So quite often they'll land in the river and have to figure out how to swim pretty quickly. Amongst the noisy crowd, Liz spotted a few familiar faces, have survived a year in the wild. Some of the others that we released last year come back with new partners, so that's really cool to say that they really start breeding. Despite its small size, the black stilltars the only braided river bird to live in the Mackenzie all year round, from freezing mornings to hot summer days. When it's negative 10 degrees and I'm having to wear freezing workers gloves just to feed the birds because my hands are so cold and these things that weigh about half half the amount of a block of butter, they live in this environment. It's incredible. With the young khaki birds already practicing their mating displays, Liz's hopeful this lot of exhibitionists will be laying eggs of their own within two to three years. Particularly in the avarice they wait until we're watching before they put on their way show for us. So yeah, yeah, we do quite a bit of bird-proofing in this job. Hopefully, practice pays off and with the help of Liz's team and the Predator Control Program to Manohuna Araki, the khaki population and the Mackenzie Basin continues to climb.