A kiwi in the wild on Rakiura Track
After years spent lurking in the bush after dark, I finally caught a glimpse of New Zealand's national bird, during the day!
“Kiwi fight!” yelled somebody from outside the hut. The majority of the guests dropped what they were doing and dashed out the door. There, on the grass below the deck, they saw what they came for: two kiwi birds brawling like mobsters in a Tarantino flick. The hikers stood, bemused by the scene unfolding before them. Nobody knew who started it, nor what it was over.
That’s the story relayed to me by a French traveller I met in 2015. I was cycling The Big Loop and was camping at Ōkārito (must-visit, West Coast gold town) for the night. In the kitchen there, my temporary travel pal was relaying what had happened on her walk of Rakiura Track. It sounded barmy and exhilarating. Seeing NZ’s national bird in the feathers would be fascinating enough; add in the spectacle of a stoush with another bird and you’re seeing nature at its pinnacle. Actually, you’re seeing the pinnacle of human nature, anthropomorphised.
I ticked ‘read only’ on that memory and stowed it where not even the next day’s bridge-demolishing rain could flush it out. There it stayed until 2023. Then, in planning for our Big Hike Holiday, Zoe mentioned her life-list1 item of wanting seeing a kiwi in the wild. Me too! I’ve lost track of hour many Dunc hours have been spent crouching in the woods after dark, hoping to spot one, so it made sense that we head to Stewart Island to try and do this. They are, after all, as common as weka there.
Right off the Milford Track, we immediately secured a last minute booking on Rakiura Track. I’ve barked on about this before, but here we go again: there is often a way to get onto a Great Walk even though you didn’t book on the mad rush media hype day! People change and cancel their bookings, the campsites were never fully booked or the particular walk you want to do was never actually full. Even the most popular Milford Track can be walked from early May for a measly $25 a night2!
Ferry tickets secured, we opted for the free parking outside Bluff police station over the Wilson Parking offering at the ferry terminal - definitely no relation - and walked our packs over to the vessel. Due to the conditions Foveaux Strait can churn up, my nickname for it is the ‘Terror Ferry’, however our crossing that day was of the mild variety.
Oban supplies supplied, we road-walked to the start of the track at Lee Bay and then track-walked the track to Port William and its hut, where we spent the first night. We saw no kiwi.
Next morning, our sprightly march through the forest was abruptly halted when we ran into three fellow travellers who said they’d just seen a kiwi bird, “but I scared it off” said one of them. A kiwi bird, during the day!? Confused by why the day’s 13km hike was set to take six hours, we were no more: you spend it walking slowly and quietly, in the hope of seeing a birdy.
Practically tip-toeing, we ambled on, through mud, up the hill, down the other side and had practically forgotten to keep quiet and go slowly, when we came across a traffic stop. A traffic stop? On a walking track? It was staffed by one of our hut-mates and he had the message: “shhhh. There’s a kiwi just over there in the bush!”
We looked and saw several hikers/people/temporary friends all tracking something with their eyes, as it moved between the low-lying piupiu crown ferns. We moved to get in on the action. Zoe wrangled open her camera bag, while I snuck across to the creek, near to where our lil kiwi pal was foraging.
The beak was working overtime, digging out worms and grubs from the forest floor. Occasionally, it would be disturbed by the small group and go for a little run, to further its distance from us, but at one point it also ran right past me. I felt like Sam Neill watching the gallimimus running by in Jurassic Park - only my dinosaur was real, not CGI. Right there, in broad daylight! It was magic.
That night, right outside the hut, we also saw three. So, there were some night-loving ones about too!
Fifteen years living in this land and my time to witness this wonder had finally come: I can now non-fraudulently apply for the Passport 2.0. The encounter has made me something of a kiwi tragic. I’ve read lots of Wikipedia and other articles about them. Here are my top kiwi bird facts:
The kiwi on Rakiura belong to the species known as ‘tokoeka’, which literally means ‘weka with a walking stick’ in Māori.
There seems to be little-to-no consensus on why kiwi are nocturnal and how long they have been that way. This 2015 study reckons they have always been that way to avoid competing with the much larger (now extinct) moa. However, others seem to think it’s a learned behaviour thanks to the more recent introduction of predatory mammals (and perhaps even humans!). In either case, they aren’t strictly nocturnal. I know this because I saw one during the day!
According to our hut warden on Rakiura Track, the leading theory as to why Stewart Island kiwi are commonly seen breaking nocturnal-living rules is this: the older males want to hog the prime feeding slots for themselves, so push the teenagers out to feed in broad daylight! If that’s rules-based order in kiwi society, I don’t want a peck of it.
And my favourite - courtesy of Caleb, the hut warden at Dumpling Hut, on Milford Track: the kiwi has the shortest beak out of any bird on the planet. Yes, the that long twig on a kiwi’s face is the world’s shortest beak. Why? Because a bird’s beak is measured as the distance between the nostrils and the end of the pointy bit. Since a kiwi’s nostrils are right at the end of their pointy bit, they have the shortest beak out of any bird on Earth. But, they don’t really, do they?
‘Bucket list’ is too negative
Although, admittedly, without many of the hut comforts and track bridges, so you could, in theory, have a much more horrible time.
so cool