Kiwis | Apterygiformes

Kiwi's | Apterigiformes

The only birds with the nostrils at the tip of the bill instead of at its base, and behind them an unusually large olfactory centre in the brain: these birds find their food by touch and by smell, snuffling through the forest floor. The skeleton is heavy and marrow-filled rather than air-filled, the wing is reduced to a clawed stub a few centimetres long, and there is no tail. Stiff, whisker-like feathers stand around the base of the bill; the plumage is loose and hair-like and the body temperature runs a few degrees below that of other birds. They are nocturnal, live in lasting pairs holding a large territory, and call to one another in the dark with a shrill sound that carries far.

Families in this order

Kiwis | Apterygidae4 speciesThe 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.