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Portrait of North Island brown kiwi

Nature · Birds

North Island brown kiwi

Vulnerable (IUCN) · c. 24,500 birds

Apteryx mantelli — Apterygidae

The commonest of the five kiwi species and the one most people mean by "kiwi", a flightless, nocturnal, chicken-sized ratite of North Island forest and scrub. Kiwi lay the largest egg relative to body size of any bird — up to about a fifth of the female's weight — and the male incubates it for roughly 75 to 90 days. The bird is the national symbol of New Zealand and gives New Zealanders their nickname.

How to spot them

  • â–ļA tailless, wingless-looking brown bird with coarse, hair-like streaked feathers and stout legs set far back
  • â–ļA long, pale, flexible bill with nostrils at the very tip — unique among birds — and cat-like whiskers at the base
  • â–ļNo keel on the sternum; vestigial wings about 3 cm long hidden in the plumage
  • â–ļCalls at night: the male a shrill, repeated ascending whistle, the female a hoarse, lower rasp
  • â–ļFeeding probe-holes in soft ground, and a heavy, ponderous running gait

How to know it

Alone among birds, its nostrils are at the very tip of the bill, and it hunts worms by smell in the dark

Brown kiwi — an olfactory forager with a poor sense of sight.

Lays the largest egg relative to body size of any bird, up to about 20 per cent of the female's weight

Kiwi — the male then incubates it for 75–90 days.

A flightless ratite whose bones, unlike other birds', contain marrow, and whose body temperature is about 38 C, low for a bird

Kiwi — convergently mammal-like.

Gives its name to both the people of its country and, since the 1960s, to a Chinese gooseberry rebranded for export

Kiwi; the fruit was renamed kiwifruit by New Zealand exporters.

Genetic work places its closest living relatives not in New Zealand but in Madagascar and Australia — the elephant birds and the emu-cassowary line

Kiwi — elephant birds are the sister group.

Operation Nest Egg lifts eggs and chicks from the wild and returns them at about 1 kg, past the weight at which stoats can kill them

Save the Kiwi / DOC management of brown kiwi.

Quick-fire facts

  • â€ĒApteryx means 'without wing'; mantelli honours Walter Mantell. Kiwi are the smallest living ratites
  • â€ĒRoughly 24,500 North Island brown kiwi survive; DOC and Save the Kiwi report the population now increasing, and New Zealand reclassified it from 'At Risk – Declining' to 'Not Threatened' in 2022
  • â€ĒIUCN Red List: Vulnerable
  • â€ĒStoats and dogs are the main killers; without predator control only about 5 per cent of chicks reach adulthood
  • â€ĒKiwi are monogamous, pairs often lasting decades, and defend territories of several hectares
  • â€ĒThere are five species: North Island brown, Southern brown (tokoeka), Great spotted (roroa), Little spotted (kiwi pukupuku) and the Okarito kiwi (rowi), the rarest
  • â€ĒThe soldiers' nickname 'Kiwis' for New Zealanders dates from the First World War; the bird has appeared on New Zealand coins and regimental badges
  • â€ĒA kiwi's egg is so large that the female must eat three times her normal amount while carrying it, and fasts in the days before laying

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