Someone Explain Kiwis to Me

The national bird. I don't get it

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david ruddock via flickr

The funny thing about kiwis—the birds, not the people—is that you only ever get to see them under a red light. They’re nocturnal animals. They hide in the bush, and flee from bright light. On guided kiwi-spotting bush walks, and even in captive nature-center habitats, the frumpy little bird appears to our human eyes bathed in a vaguely sinister robot red.

I’ve seen three in my life. One was the dearly departed albino kiwi at Pūkaha National Wildlife Center—behind glass, and glowing a glam pink.

I saw two more last week on Kapiti Island. These were Kiwi pukupukus, or little spotted kiwis, mottled grey like a cat. The first was not twenty meters from our cabin. There it was, in the red beam of our guide’s torch: a spotted, pink puffball poking through the leaves. A few seconds was all we got before it wandered deeper into the bush.

I’m old enough to remember darkrooms. They had the same weird red light, both anodyne and loaded with mysterious portent. The kiwi emerged from the underbrush like the grainy shadow in a photographic print. A ghost, a copy, the shadow of a truth.

What is this bird supposed to make me feel?

Confession time: kiwis don’t do it for me. They’re cute, yeah. By cute I think we just mean mammalian. No wings to speak of, feathers soft as fur, hops about on big scratchy feet. If there’s a bird closer to a bunny, I’d like to see it.

Being a national symbol, though—that’s a mighty weight. If you grow up here, a visit to Kapiti Island or Pūkaha or any other kiwi sanctuary is an exercise in school spirit. If you’re just visiting, it’s an exotic line on the bucket list, akin to the Americans visiting China who fly out to Chengdu just to see a panda in a zoo.

And if you’re an outsider living here—if you’re figuring out how to maybe someday be from here—a kiwi eating bugs under a red light is a funny thing to learn to love.

Going full American a sec: The bald eagle is freakin’ gorgeous, in any light. It’s an over-the-top, movie-star beauty, too. The unnecessary flair of the snow-white head, the plastic yellow beak? Fins on a Cadillac, man. They’ve got those crazy raptor eyes, too, which gives them an air of militant self-seriousness celebrated in nationalistic tchotckes long before MAGA and so perfectly spoofed by the Muppets. Ain’t just the settlers, either. Many Native American peoples revered the bird long before my ancestors got there. Who wouldn’t? Ben Franklin famously thought them scoundrels for stealing other birds’ fish: “He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly.” But that’s their charm. A hustler god who flies like a fighter jet amd screams when he talks: that’s us, baby!

mark smith via youtube

I feel my Kiwi readers clicking away. Forget the American stuff. Bald eagles are just really pretty birds! I once saw one take flight from a white oak perched high on a bluff above the Mississippi. Big bird, big river, all the feels.

And now I want to give you two paragraphs of stirring kiwi love, but I just ain’t got it. Not yet.

Top-shelf New Zealand historian Jock Phillips tried to figure out why “this unholy looking bird” wound up a national mascot. The Māori honored them before European settlers ever arrived, so that’s a start. As in America, settlers love to make any sacred thing their own. Phillips also notes it’s just a funny looking bird, easy to draw in a recognizable way. See the ‘New Zealand Made’ tag. See this cool screengrab

Dr Sea

shared in our subscriber chat last week in which Mohua Golden Bay looks like a giant kiwi with a glowing robot eye:

Maybe it’s the mammal thing. The only native NZ mammals are tiny bats. Every other warmblooded beast here is an interloper. Māori brought the kiore, and Europeans brought the entire cast of The Wind in the Willows. We hairy, live-birthing apes of New Zealand have now spent decades slaughtering our invasive cousins in order to protect kiwis and other birds, just because these feathered dinosaur spawn got here first. It’s an honorable sacrifice, though a bloody one. Traps line the Kapiti Island beaches. The signage brags of possums culled in a five-figure body count. We have made our offering to the bird gods. Maybe the fuzzy, earthbound kiwi is our avian demigod, arguing with the kererū, the tūī, the pīwakawaka, the kākā, and all the rest for our permission to stay.

A twelve-year-old boy on the tour hadn’t seen the kiwi. He was a local kid, from just up the coast. In the dark I could feel our guide resolve to find him another.

We walked in silence for nearly an hour, red lights at our feet and the moon overhead. I didn’t care if we saw another bird. I’d pay good money to just be led around a semi-uninhabited Pacific island in the moonlight.

The guide stopped short. We gathered around her red torch as its beam searched the bush. There it was—another kiwi pukupuku. A male this time, the guide whispered. The boy saw it, too.

We watched it for a minute. My eyes adjusted to the red light. Stand still enough and the nation disappears. It’s just a bird like a rabbit, scratching for dinner in the dark.

Another minute and the guide pulled us away.

I think it’s time we let him alone, she said. Thanks, Mr. Kiwi.

Thanks, Mr. Kiwi, we repeated. Then we bid each other goodnight.

I’ve never said thanks to an eagle. //