Author's Note:
This is another poem I wrote as a result of my recent trip to Deep Cove, on Doubtful Sound, in New Zealand's Fiordland National Park - a UNESCO World Heritage-listed Wilderness area.

Kiwis - New Zealand's most iconic native species - are small, brown, fuzzy, flightless birds about the size of a domestic chicken. They belong to an ancient group of birds that can't fly - the ratites. Kiwis are nocturnal, coming out on nightfall to forage for food. In recent years they have become endangered, due mainly to introduced predators such as dogs, cats, rats, ferrets and weasels which hunt the kiwi and eat its eggs.
Thankfully, kiwi are adaptable, and live in a wide range of habitats - from native forest and scrub to rough farmland and plantation forests, sand dunes and snowy tussocks. They especially like places where stands of trees run down to rivers in wetland vegetation. They prefer damp gullies in native forest and dense shrubland

(New Zealanders themselves have been called 'Kiwis' since the nickname was bestowed by Australian soldiers in the First World War.)

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