Letter to Myself: Surviving the Baby Pukeko Encounter

Dear Tom of six months ago,

You're currently sitting on the floor of the flat in Hackney, aggressively trying to cram forty-two nappies and a mountain of wipes into a suitcase that was clearly designed for a weekend in Paris, not a month-long trip to New Zealand with two-year-old twins. You think the twenty-four-hour flight is going to be the hardest part of this journey (and to be fair, the flight will be a standard hostage situation that we don't need to discuss). But you're wrong. The real test of your parenting mettle is waiting for you in a muddy drainage ditch behind your mother-in-law’s house in Auckland.

I'm writing to you from the future to warn you about the swamp hens.

The screaming ditch goblin

It will happen on a Tuesday. You’ll be desperately trying to burn off the girls' jet lag by walking them around a local nature reserve. You will be holding two half-eaten rice cakes and praying for a flat white. Suddenly, you'll hear a screech so violently harsh you'll assume Florence has trapped her fingers in the hinges of the double buggy. You will sprint over, heart hammering against your ribs, only to find the twins standing on the edge of a marsh, completely unharmed, staring down at what I can only describe as a tiny, furious, bald old man wearing oversized clown shoes.

Matilda will point a chubby finger at it and shout, "Baby p! Baby p!" with absolute delight.

She is trying to say infant pūkeko, which is what your mother-in-law will later inform you this creature is called. To you, it'll just look like a mistake of evolution. These chicks hatch covered in straggly black fuzz, sporting a massive, bizarrely bright crimson bill, and eyes that look like they’ve been on a three-day bender in Soho. But the feet, Tom. The feet are disproportionately massive. They use them to figure out the swampy terrain, but it honestly looks like the bird has stolen its father's boots and is struggling to walk to the pub.

You will stand there, paralyzed by the sheer volume of the noise it makes when it drops into a squat and waves its spindly little wings at you, demanding food. Don't give it the rice cake, Tom. I know you'll be tempted to negotiate with the terrorist, but avian dietary needs are incredibly complex, and I'm fairly certain processed organic blueberry snacks are not on the menu.

A masterclass in communal parenting that you'll deeply resent

Here's a piece of trivia that will make you irrationally angry when you learn it: these birds have cracked the parenting code, and they're mocking us.

When you frantically look up "screaming bald swamp bird" on your phone while trying to keep the twins from wading into the muck, you'll discover that the Australasian swamphen lives in what scientists call polygynandrous groups. Basically, it’s a commune. Multiple females lay up to twenty-five eggs in one massive, shared nest. And when the babies hatch, literally every single member of the flock—the older siblings, the non-breeding bachelor uncles, the random cousins—all pitch in to feed, brood, and protect the chicks.

You will read this and feel a deep, burning jealousy. These bizarre, screeching marsh chickens have an entire village raising their young, while you and Sarah haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep since 2021. If a hawk flies over the swamp, the adult birds all band together and aggressively mob the predator while the babies hide in the reeds. Meanwhile, the last time you struggled to fold the buggy on a crowded Victoria line train while Florence had a meltdown, a man in a suit just sighed loudly and stepped over you to get to Pret.

What the wildlife bloke actually told me to do

Because you're an anxious Londoner entirely disconnected from nature, you'll assume the bird is orphaned and immediately panic about how you're going to smuggle a protected native species through customs.

A bloke I ended up calling from a local wildlife rescue—who sounded immensely tired of tourists—essentially told me that unless the thing is bleeding, just back away slowly and let the commune handle it, because the family is probably watching you from the bushes right now, judging your parenting. If a cat has had a go at it (and apparently cats are the absolute worst thing to happen to native birds), you're supposed to carefully scoop it up with a towel, chuck it in a dark, quiet cardboard box with a lukewarm hot water bottle so it doesn't freeze to death, and bring it to a professional who actually knows how to mimic a parent bird's beak to feed it, rather than you trying to force-feed it a squashed oat bar while weeping.

My GP back home vaguely mentioned once that wild birds can carry all sorts of terrifying things like Salmonella and avian flu, though whether you can actually catch the plague from standing near a chick in a ditch remains scientifically murky to me. Regardless, you'll spend the next three hours obsessively scrubbing the twins' hands with industrial amounts of soap just in case.

Things that honestly survived the swamp

Let's talk about the gear you're currently packing. Half of it's useless, but a few things will save your sanity.

If there's one thing you must not take out of that suitcase, it's the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesies. I know you bought them thinking they’d just look nice in photos, but they're the only reason we survived the ditch incident. When Matilda inevitably slipped and sat directly in a puddle of what I can only hope was just mud, that bodysuit took the brunt of it. Because it’s 95% organic cotton, it didn't trigger her eczema even when damp, and the envelope shoulders meant I could peel it downwards off her body like a filthy banana skin, rather than dragging swamp water over her head. They wash incredibly well, which is vital when your child decides her new hobby is rolling in wetland habitats.

On the other hand, you can probably leave the Gentle Baby Building Block Set at home. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly fine soft rubber blocks, and the fact that they don't hurt when Florence hurls one at my head from the backseat of the rental car is a plus. But they take up entirely too much room in the luggage, and since they float, one of them ended up bobbing away down a stream while I was trying to prevent a toddler from hugging wildlife. Keep them in the living room in London where they belong.

If you want to pack things that really make this chaotic phase of parenting marginally easier—and clothing that won't disintegrate the second it touches international mud—you should really explore the organic baby clothes collection before you zip that suitcase.

A final word of advice

Nature is not the beautifully curated aesthetic experience we pretend it's on Instagram. It's loud, it's messy, and it occasionally involves a tiny bird screaming at you like you owe it money.

Just let the twins watch from a safe distance. Let them learn that not every animal is a fluffy cartoon character. Teach them the harsh, beautiful reality of the marshland. And for the love of God, remember to pack the hand sanitizer.

Take a look at Kianao's full range of sustainable essentials to stock up before your next wildly unpredictable family outing.

Yours from the future,
Tom

Some questions you'll frantically Google at 2am

Are swamphen chicks dangerous to toddlers?
Unless your toddler has a phobia of incredibly ugly, screeching things, no. The chicks themselves are just loud and demanding. The real danger is the fiercely protective communal parents hiding in the reeds, and the fact that wild animals carry bacteria that I don't even want to think about. We operate on a strict "look with our eyes, not with our hands" policy now.

What do I do if my kid touches one?
I'm not a doctor, but my frantic internet search suggested that washing their hands immediately with hot, soapy water is the best course of action. Don't let them put their fingers in their mouths. If you're miles from a sink, drown their hands in sanitizer and pray to whatever deity watches over exhausted parents.

Why do the babies look so weird?
Apparently, they're born "nidifugous," which basically means they're ready to run around just days after hatching. They don't have time to grow cute fluffy feathers; they're too busy marching through the mud and demanding to be fed by their six different aunts and uncles.

Should I try to feed a lost chick?
Absolutely not. Unless you've warmed kitten wet food and the highly specific ability to tap a chick's beak to simulate a mother bird, you'll do more harm than good. Put it in a box with a towel, keep it warm, and call someone who gets paid to deal with this.