Fifteen endangered birds have been released back into the wild, with their Bay of Plenty habitat clean after being threatened by the Rena oil spill.
The dotterel, which live on Maketu Spit, were pre-emptively caught to protect them from the oil that belched from the stricken container ship after it grounded on Astrolabe Reef in October.
Only about 1700 dotterel remain in the wild.
More than 1300 birds, along with other animals, died as a result of the oil spill.
The dotterel were cared for by the National Oiled Wildlife Response Team in purpose-built aviaries at Te Maunga over several weeks.
The birds were blessed by a kaumatua before being released on Saturday.
Meanwhile, bad weather was hampering the removal of containers from the Rena.
Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) says 167 containers have been removed so far.
There were 1368 containers on board the vessel when it grounded, but 88 were known to have fallen overboard.
More bad weather was expected over the weekend, but it was not stopping other salvage work, MNZ said.
Salvage company Svitzter spent Friday working to ballast the ship's port side tanks by pumping in water, to compensate for the weight of the containers that have been removed.
Salvors were also regularly skimming residual oil from the ship's starboard fuel tank, while a narrow sheen of light oil was spotted to the west of the ship by an observation flight on Saturday morning.
NZN