Kiwis | Apterygidae

Kiwi's | Kiwis

The egg is, relative to the bird, the largest of any bird's: up to about a fifth of the female's weight, and so large that the clutch rarely holds more than one or two, and that the female can barely feed in the last days before laying. In most species the male incubates, for eleven weeks, in a burrow under a tree root or in a dense clump. The chick hatches fully feathered, leaves the burrow after a few days and is never fed. The birds work over the forest floor at night, driving the bill into the ground to its base and smelling and feeling out earthworms and grubs; the snuffling is audible from several metres. They hold fixed territories, defended with a shrill call in which male and female sound different.