Kotuku

This film takes us to Okarito Lagoon in the far south-west of New Zealand, where the rare white heron’s ancestral nesting tree stands beside the quiet waters. Each spring about forty of these birds gather in the same tree to build their nests, rear their young, and depart before winter comes. Kotuku, or white heron, was a sacred bird of the Maori, so rare that “the flight of the white heron is seen but once in a lifetime”.