Apteryx australis lawryi

How to see a kiwi in the wild.

1. Hop a sleepless 13 hour flight to New Zealand.
2. Sit back for 12 hours while the InterCity bus transports you from Auckland to Wellington.
3. Cruise the Interislander over to the South Island.
4. Buy a car and drive something like 1000 km to the bottom of the country.
5. Make your way to Stewart Island via the 1 hour ferry.
6. Charter a water taxi to the trail junction and then hike 15 km through the mud and the driving rain and wind to Mason Bay.
7. Toss your excessively heavy pack in the hut and wander around silently for a few hours until you see that little kiwi butt poking out of the ferny understory.
8. Sit in amazement as the kiwi (the kiwi!!) snouts around in the dirt looking for insect edibles, rattling the ferns as it moves and sneezing to expel the dirt clogged in its nostrils.
9. Watch transfixed as the kiwi emerges from the bush out onto the open path a meter away from you. It eyes you and freezes for two seconds that feel like forever, and then hurriedly scuttles out of sight into the safety of the fern thicket.

This is it. I'm the farthest from home I've ever been, at the bottom of New Zealand, on the far side of Stewart Island. I'm looking at a wild kiwi. It's come true.


*****


This is Roa, the Stewart Island Brown Kiwi. Some 20,000 inhabit Stewart Island--this is the only remaining stable population of kiwi in New Zealand. Unlike mainland kiwis, this subspecies forages throughout the day as well as the night. They are frequently seen in this area during the day, shnarfing and sniffling through the ferns in search of tasty grubs.

It's not clear why Stewart Island kiwis are active in the daylight. Theories suppose that they require more time to forage for food than mainland species, perhaps because the acidic soil contains lower percentages of insect prey, and/or because the summer nights here on Stewart Island just aren't long enough for the birds to be strictly nocturnal.

It is the special ways by which the kiwi have adapted to their environment that make them so unique--and weird. Kiwi (like other flightless NZ species such as the Kakapo parrot) are thought to have evolved their secretive and nocturnal habits to avoid Haast's Eagle, the largest bird of prey that ever lived and a predator of ground-dwelling birds that quickly went extinct with the arrival of the Maori around 1400. Kiwi weigh more than other similarly sized birds because their bones are solid; the honeycomb structure of most birds' bones is a necessary adaptation for flight.

Looking at the forest floor on which the kiwi travels, the evolutionary purpose of its plumage also comes sharply into focus: the dense twiggy brush that falls from the native trees above and litters the ground strongly resembles the streaky stringy feathers of the kiwi's body. As such they are not easy to spot when they are in the open, which is rare anyway.

I really wasn't sure what it would be like to see the kiwi here in Mason Bay, or even if I would see them. This was the first of three encounters I had with them over the two days I stayed here. Here's the thing about seeing a kiwi for the first time: they are difficult for your brain to comprehend. They don't look like any bird you've ever seen. Their bodies are a strange shape, bulbous in the back with a long jutting neck and a pale pointy beak, the base of which is covered with wiry whiskers. And then there are those scaly dinosaur feet, reminiscent of other ratites--ostriches, emus, cassowaries. They run quickly but awkwardly, their heavy bulk causing them to sway side to side as they bound, their head jutting far out in front of them to stabilize their center of mass.

In addition to the inexplicability of their anomalous features, I could only get a moment here and there of one in full view before it would disappear back into the dense underbrush. After a kiwi had appeared briefly in the open and then retreated back into the ferns I was left with a strange sense that maybe it had all been a figment of my imagination. So I think now that I've gotten fleeting glimpses of them in the wild, I will have to visit a kiwi in a sanctuary so that I can spend some time coming to terms with such a strange and wondrous bird.

It goes without saying, but I will anyway: it was an immensely fulfilling experience.