Our evolution as Kiwis based on bird
The kiwi has always been special and on August 20, 1904, it’s believed the shy, curious bird truly became the official image of New Zealand and its people. Jessica Long reports.
As early as 1893, ornithologists and travellers were spreading the word. ‘‘The most extraordinary bird in the world is the kiwi,’’ according to Canterbury newspaper the Ellesmere Guardian.
But it was clear outsiders had no idea what this little bird was – Scottish zoologist Robert Knox called it a ‘‘New Zealand emu’’ in an 1841 article describing a female specimen he had dissected.
But he was exacerbated by descriptions of the kiwi’s habits by others, worried people would imagine the defenceless animal as a grotesque, worm-eating monster of the night, with long, cat-like whiskers, feathers like fur, and legs so sturdy they beat up dogs as they were snatched in their jaws.
Needless to say, every man (and sadly their dogs) wanted to know more about this bird of strange descriptions that no-one saw.
‘‘The kiwi buries itself asleep all day . . . is the latest of all the birds but catches the most worms,’’ the Ellesmere Guardian said.
‘‘For this, let us honour the kiwi, and hurl him in the face of the early risers.
‘‘The kiwi having no wings has the appearance of running about with his hands in his pockets because of the cold.’’
But for Ma¯ ori, the kiwi was always a special bird.
Named te manu huna a Ta¯ ne – the hidden bird of the god of the forest, the skins of kiwi were sewn together to make feather cloaks which were usually worn by chiefs, according to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage website Te Ara.
‘‘Any glimpse his friends have of him here is short. Suddenly brought out into the day, he stands for a moment, and blinks; then he puts his beak up and his legs apart, and there is a black streak and a heap of straw where it vanishes."
While Ma¯ ori also ate the bird, preserving them in fat and cooking them in a ha¯ ngı¯, 19th-century explorer Charlie Douglas described the taste as ‘‘a piece of pork boiled in an old coffin’’. He thought their eggs were great fried in ka¯ ka¯ po¯ oil.
Despite the varied agreement on taste, it didn’t take long before companies adopted the kiwi in products, looking for symbols and trademarks for seeds, veterinary medicines, drugs and varnishes, to identify its maker – New Zealand.
Many birds took to the stage playing New Zealand’s identity role: tui, kea and ka¯ ka¯ , as well as the now extinct moa and huia. Other symbols at this time included fern leaves, a small boy, and a young lion cub.
When it came to the kiwi, the South Canterbury Battalion beat most to the punch, adopting the bird for its military badge in 1886, well before people were writing home about it.
Like a lot of New Zealand’s history, sport played a huge role and the making of the people’s bird was no different.
On Saturday, August 20, 1904, the New Zealand Free Lance printed a full-page cartoon by
J C Blomfield: The triumph of John Bull, Junior. Episodes of fact and fancy in the struggle for rugby supremacy.
It’s believed this was the start of New Zealanders identifying as ‘‘Kiwis’’, probably because the bird had a distinct shape and was unique to the country.
The kiwi morphs into a moa as the All Blacks defeated the ‘‘Motherland’’ 9-3 in their first rugby test.
‘‘This may have been the first use of a kiwi to symbolise the nation in a cartoon,’’ Te Ara said. In 1905, cartoonist and etcher Trevor Lloyd depicted a kiwi unable to swallow Wales after the All Blacks’ controversial loss in Cardiff. When the Originals won, they were shown as a moa, the New Zealand History website said.
Lloyd used the moa a lot in his cartoons, but by 1908 the kiwi’s popularity had risen as quickly as the bird’s risk of extinction.
You could almost thank the Australians for helping aid New Zealand’s identity crisis, when an Australian boot polish called Kiwi became widely used during World War I.
It was named after the birthplace of founder William Ramsay’s wife, and by the end of the war, New Zealanders were also being called ‘‘Kiwis’’. Formerly they’d been ‘‘Enzeders’’, ‘‘diggers’’, ‘‘pig-islanders’’, ‘‘Maorilanders’’ or ‘‘Fernleaves’’.
At the end of the war, NZ soldiers carved a giant kiwi on the chalk hills above Salisbury Plain in England.
Curious, quirky, late risers, with a good appetite, and intelligent eye; perhaps people started to see a little bit of themselves in the kiwi.
‘Any glimpse his friends have of him here is short.’