I've Heard A Lot About You!

I entered the little kiwi habitat at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve and let my eyes adjust to the artificial full moonlight. The guidebook warned me not to expect anything, since kiwis are reclusive and nocturnal, and would be sleeping right now. There was lots of noise on the roof, from birds hopping outside on the roof, and plant branches swishing in the wind against it. Altogether, a pretty noisy and altogether too well-lit place for shy little hermits.

Nevertheless, there was another noise too. At the crook in the footpath, just on the other side of the low wire fence, there was a clattering. Sure enough, it was a little brown kiwi, about the size of a chicken, clattering its beak against a PVC pipe as it dug a hole. Even though I was right next to it, the kiwi seemed completely oblivious to my presence. The kiwi's focus was on this excavation project. Was the kiwi trying to get to some water from the pipe? Apparently not: the little insomniac was digging a hole within which to place its head, to cut out the light and noise and try and get some well-earned sleep. I whispered, "I've heard a lot about you!" After a while, the kiwi stopped moving - sleep at last!

Against the far wall of the habitat I saw another kiwi secretively striding from one place to another, looking like a refugee from an Edward Gorey ink-drawing cartoon. And I saw a third kiwi against a wall, looking like a stone or a bowling ball, also with its beak pointed into a dark corner, trying to sleep.

The little brown kiwis are the most populous of the four kinds of kiwis. Once having numbered in the millions, with less than 50,000 left alive, mostly in zoos or natural preserves, I was lucky to have seen any kiwis at all.