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Kiwis at the National Zoo
There are five species of kiwi, all of which are flightless and unique to New Zealand. The National Zoo is home to several brown kiwis, the only kiwi that can be seen outside of New Zealand.
Keeper Kathy Brader provides updates about the Zoo's kiwis, including Koa, a male that hatched on March 7, 2008.
Smithsonian’s National Zoo Hatches a Kiwi
December 13, 2011
A member of one of the world’s most endangered species—the brown kiwi (Apteryx mantelli)—hatched at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s Bird House Dec. 11 at 10:25 a.m. The egg was laid Oct. 1 and keepers began looking for signs of the chick hatching starting in early December.
The sex of the chick is unknown and cannot be determined by sight until it is two years old. For this reason, National Zoo geneticists took DNA samples swabbed from the inside of the egg and will be able to determine its sex in the coming weeks.
This new chick will not be on exhibit, but people can watch it forage in its nest box on the Zoo’s Kiwi Cam. The chick is the sixth kiwi successfully hatched in the National Zoo’s history. The first was in 1975, and was also the first to occur outside of New Zealand. The Zoo did not have another successful hatching until 2006; visitors can see that male bird, Manaia, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 11 a.m. during the Meet-a-Kiwi program at the National Zoo’s Bird House. The National Zoo is the only zoo in North America to offer this kiwi program. The Zoo hatched its first female kiwi chick—Hiri—in 2010. She is now in Germany as part of the Species Survival Plan breeding program. The Zoo established a kiwi breeding facility at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Center in front Royal, Va. last year with the import of two kiwis from New Zealand.
Kiwis in captivity are extremely rare—only five zoos outside of New Zealand have successfully bred kiwis. The birds typically mate for life, and the male is responsible for incubating the egg. After kiwi chicks hatch, however, they receive no parental care. Unlike many other bird species, kiwis hatch fully feathered and equipped with all of the necessary skills they need to survive.
There are five species of kiwi and all are unique to New Zealand; the brown kiwi is the country’s national bird. The brown kiwi is classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The wild population is declining at a rate of approximately 5.8 percent a year. Nearly 90 percent of all wild North Island brown kiwi chicks are killed by stoats (members of the weasel family) and cats in unprotected areas. In areas where pest control is in place, the survival rate is high. The remaining wild population of the brown kiwi is estimated at roughly 24,000, down from 60,000 in the 1980s. However, where conservation efforts, such as Operation Next Egg occur, the kiwi population is stabilizing.
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Watching a kiwi:
A baby kiwi hatched on Sunday, December 11 at 10:30 a.m. The egg had been laid on October 1 or 2.
Fact Sheet | 
FAQ | About Kiwis | Updates
Flamingo Cam
Eggs, Feathers, and History
November 22, 2011
Lots of great things have (and are) happening in the Smithsonian’s National Zoo kiwi world. First off all of our kiwi are doing great, in fact I really excited that Koa has being maintain a weight over 1. 1 kilogram for more than six months! We are also using Koa for the Meet A Kiwi program once a week, and he has adjusted fairly well. We usually pick Wednesdays to use him, as they tend to be our quieter day at the Zoo. He has even started to take earthworms from our hands! We are all really excited to have Koa join our Ambassador kiwi program. Manaia continues to be his usual sweet self. He has had many “meet and greets” with some of our New Zealand Embassy friends. I can’t believe he is going to be celebrating his sixth birthday on February 13! What a wonderful time we have had together. He is one very special kiwi. Toru, our oldest kiwi at the Zoo, will be celebrating his 37th birthday on January 22. Toru’s claim to fame is that he was the first kiwi to hatch outside of New Zealand, and he did it here. I dug through some old photos here at the Zoo and found some photos from when he was a month or old. Someone from Public Affairs sent me some old press clippings from the Washington Post when they retired . When Toru hatched, he made the front page. They also sent me photos and the typewritten press release of when his parents were given to our zoo. The birds were being held by the then Prime Minister Keith Holyoake at the Mount Bruce Preserve.
Nessus and Maori have not been resting on their laurels either; they produced their first egg of the season on October 1 or 2. We put the egg in to the incubator in early November, and it is fertile. I have to say this is a very lively chick in the egg! I have never seen much movement at these early days, but this one is rocking and rolling. As followers of the kiwi blog, most of you will remember that kiwi incubation can be a bit odd, so we don’t really know exactly when this one will hatch. But I have a feeling by mid-December, we should be welcoming a new member of the kiwi tribe. We hope to have the kiwi cam back online in time for the last bit of the incubation but I can’t make any promises.
On this exciting note, I would like to tell you that we are getting a new kiwi chick enclosure that should be mouse-proof. We all very excited about this. The mice do not harm the chicks, but they do leave messes and eat their food. I hope that will be in place by mid-January.
On the SCBI-Front Royal side, they have increased their kiwi population by adding another young male from the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The new kiwi breeding pens should be finished by mid-December, and we should be able to move the birds to their new homes within a few weeks. The staff there are really excited about the new pens, and we expect the pair out there to begin cycling once they are settled in.
I am really proud to announce that for the first time ever the kiwi zoos (both Europe and the US) collected kiwi feathers over the past year and that the Brown Kiwi Species Survival Program officially handed over these feathers to the New Zealand Ambassador, the honorable Mike Moore. The Maori have traditionally made feather cloaks, called kakahu and are considered Taonga (treasures) by the Maori. They were only worn and made for elders or chieftains of the tribe. They are given names and are handed down thru the families. Since all kiwi are protected, when these cloaks need repair it is difficult to obtain kiwi feathers.
This program came as a result of a visit of gentleman from New Zealand who was visiting his daughter and son-in-law (who worked at the embassy). They brought him over to the zoo to meet Manaia (and the kiwi chicks at the time). He was a soft-spoken, quiet man, and I thought he enjoyed his visit. Manaia had shed a couple of feathers during the visit, and he had picked them up. I was then told he was learning to weave feathers in the traditional way, so I offered to let him have the feathers. (Fortunately Roger Smith, his son-in-law was the permit guy at the embassy and made it all nice and legal.) Roger told me afterwards that though they took him all over and to different sporting events, but he said the best thing he did was meeting Manaia and the chicks. He had never touched a kiwi before in his life. He has given talks back home about his experience here and has said it is one of his most treasured moments.
That really touched me, so I had an idea that maybe we could possible collect naturally moulted feathers and donate them to the Maori weavers. Once we were assured that we could legally import them into the country (there is the possibility of a bio-security risk), we asked if there was even a need or want for these feathers. The response was overwhelming. The Zoo’s head of animal care sciences Don Moore and I drove the feathers over to the New Zealand Embassy and presented them to the Ambassador and Roger Smith. The Smiths were returning to New Zealand in October, and they hand-carried the feathers back with them.
The feathers were welcomed with a blessing and then spent the next few weeks being cleaned by the bio-security team there. They are now with a local Maori tribe and will be distributed. I have been told that when the word got out a few days before the feathers arrived in New Zealand, the elders from different Maori tribes got together and next year’s gift (and future years) will spread out through the country. Also that next year’s gift will be receiving big news coverage (as we sort of slipped in on this one). I cannot tell you how honored I feel that our kiwi will be immortalized in cloaks back in New Zealand. We had 80 percent of all the zoos contribute this past year, and I think we will have 100 percent next year.
So on all of these exciting notes, I wish you all Happy Holidays and stayed tuned as we get closer to our newest hatching date!
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Chicks in Ohio, Eggs in Virginia
July 24, 2011
Many people have been wondering how Hiri is settling into her new home at Vogelpark in Walsrode, Germany. I have had reports that she adjusted very well and quickly. No problems with eating (I was a bit worried since kiwis can be fussy) and the staff have all fallen in love with her—how could they not? Since this is my first kiwi chick to leave for a new home, it was difficult emotionally but I was really pleased that we could contribute to the global captive population. Hiri will be next to her future mate until she reaches maturity (at least one to four years away). Kiwis are the slowest growing birds on the planet. The earliest a female kiwi has been reproduced was at a little under two years old; most hit maturity between three and five years old.
On the Columbus Zoo front, they have hatched out two male kiwi chicks. The first is named Ariki, which means first born/son. He is very active and can now be seen at Columbus for several hours a day in a special nursery, so if you are in the area, please drop in and congratulate the staff for a great job. The second chick hatched on June 23 (no name yet) and is doing great. He's gaining weight and is a good eater. The kiwi team at Columbus is grinning from ear to ear, and they should be!
In National Zoo kiwi news, I am pleased to say that Manaia has come along beautifully in his bill healing, He did sustain minor lasting damage to the very tip of his bill on the right side. He “snuffles” a bit more then he used to, but he is eating well and his weight is great. We are all pleased with his progress, and he's back to doing his regular Meet a Kiwi program.
During his recuperation period we began to introduce Koa to the world of being an ambassador kiwi. I had some reservations about how he would handle it but we were all really happy with how it went. We allowed only small groups and slowly brought him along. He has become a bit more social with his keepers, and will now take earthworms from our hands—he was never interested in hand feeding before. Although Manaia will always be the primary ambassador kiwi, we will be using Koa several times a month.
Nessus and Maori have been well but have not produced any eggs lately. Their routine seems to be laying one or more eggs every other year, so I have hopes for a chick or two this coming season. Rua and Rima—the pair at the Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia—just laid their seventh egg this past week! And even more exciting, Rima has finally realized that the big white thing is not a head rest but an egg and he is incubating! It will be weeks before we know if the egg is fertile but I am really excited that Rima is incubating.
Next Stop: Germany
May 4, 2011
Hiri, the first female kiwi to hatch here, will be leaving us next Wednesday, May 11, to journey to Vogelpark in Walsrode, Germany. This move has been planned for several months by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Red Studbook Program for kiwis, as part of a future breeding program. A young four-year-old male kiwi is awaiting her arrival. Hiri will represent a whole new blood line for Europe's kiwis. Although the male will have to wait for Hiri to grow up (two to three years from now), we are pleased that they will be next to each other so they can get acquainted. It will be helpful for them to see, smell, and "talk" to each other for a long period of time.
We are very sad and excited at the same for our "little girl" to make this next important step in her life. We will miss her but we can’t wait to see her offspring in a few years. Kia manuia, Hiri! ("good luck" in Maori). Here's a photo of her, taken when she was just a week old.
The kiwi cam will be turned off once Hiri departs, as there are no plans to relocate any of our five remaining kiwis to that enclosure. If her parents, Nessus and Maori, produce another chick, it will likely be on the cam, so follow the Zoo’s news! In the meantime, visitors will be able to meet Manaia, Hiri’s older brother, at the Meet a Kiwi program every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11 a.m.
Moving Forward
March 28, 2011
It has been eventful around here lately, some good, some not so good. To start with the not so good: Areta’s death. I want to thank each of you who emailed me or wrote a letter to express your sympathy to me and the rest of Team Kiwi here. All of us really appreciated it and were very touched by all the friends our birds have made all over the world. Thank you. Your thoughtfulness has made it easier to handle this.
Hiri
Hiri is doing well. I have been getting emails about the big black tub in her enclosure. That is her new water bowl. Kiwis like to play around in water and we felt she is large enough to have a “pool.” We are still recording every night to be able to develop the activity budget for kiwi chicks. I will be getting help from a college student this summer who will study the recordings and help us pull the data. I am very excited to see what we'll learn over the long term from the recordings.
Manaia
Manaia somehow damaged the tip of his beak and a small slit along the top of the beak. I found him in his burrow at the early check.
We rushed him to the veterinary hospital; we had to put him under anesthesia to get a good look at the beak and to clean him up. Fortunately his injury does not appear to have caused any permanent damage. We had to hand feed him for almost a month, which was not a problem since he loves to be hand fed. For the first ten days or so he was unhappy, so I'd spend my lunch hour with him. He just wanted to snuggle under my sweatshirt and snooze. He is such a nice kiwi and, being so sweet natured, he made it very easy to medicate (we put his medication in earthworms) and keep a close eye on his progress. Of course, we had to cancel our Meet a Kiwi program for a while as he is not up to snuff yet. But we are now confident that he will soon be back to 100 percent.
One of the good signs in the first week was that he began to probe again. He is now eating on his own but we all hand feed him a few earthworms in the morning just to see how he is doing.
Koa
In the meantime, we are working with Koa to see if we can prepare him to be another Kiwi Ambassador. In the last few weeks he has become more comfortable with the viewing box and with a few of the staff. He is not ready to entertain the big crowds yet, but in a few weeks we will begin testing him with small quiet groups and see how he does. I am very hopeful that this will work out for him and us.
Breeding Update
The last kiwi egg at the Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, was infertile, which was a bit of surprise but that does happen. I have nothing to report from our pair at the Bird House. They spent the last three months in our basement nursery area while we did some work on their enclosure, so now that they are back outside I hope they will produce an egg for us.
A Chick!
The last thing I want to share with all of you is that the Columbus Zoo hatched its first kiwi chick on March 22. I got a frantic call on the 21st from their curator, who asked if I could come up and help them through this hatching. I was lucky enough that it worked out. I got to the Columbus Zoo a little after midnight that night. The zoo's primary bird/kiwi keeper, one of its vets, and I pulled out the egg and candled it. We could see the wee one’s beak poking out of its external pip hole. Everything looked great! So off to bed and back at 7 a.m. to check on the chick's progress. Not too much had happened.
By early evening it had made more cracks, so we came back at 3 a.m. (I thought I was nuts to suggest that time), but the primary kiwi keeper, another bird keeper, and I walked into the incubator room, flipped up the curtain on the incubator, and lo and behold there was a kiwi chick!!! The primary keeper called the vet, and when he told her the chick was out we could all hear her scream “Shut up!” in disbelief.
The chick looked great and by the time I left three days later it was standing up (a little shaky still). This one has quite a personality; it stares right at everyone who comes into the room (when it's awake). Columbus Zoo hopes that it will be able to build a nursery area so the chick can be put out in a couple of months for the public to see a few hours a day.
Our genetics department is going to sex this chick, so the one souvenir I brought back with me was the egg he hatched out of. If all goes well, anyone who is in that area should go and see the newest member of the kiwi family. Columbus Zoo joins a very exclusive group of zoos that have successfully bred kiws. It is the third zoo in the U.S. and the fifth zoo in the world (outside of New Zealand) to have bred them.
Congratulations to Columbus Zoo and especially its bird team! Below is a picture of the newest member of the kiwi family.
Very Sad News
February 15, 2011
It is with a very heavy heart that I write this update. Our youngest kiwi, Areta, died in the early morning of February 14. We're not yet sure what happened and are awaiting the necropsy results. When we have some answers, I will post an update. We have been most fortunate here at the Smithsonian in that we have never lost a kiwi chick before, so this has been devastating to the kiwi team here. Areta was such a fun kiwi, quite bold and a very inquisitive girl. Areta gave Hiri such a run for her money (so to speak), standing up to her and poking at her feathers. Hiri was never impressed and really couldn’t understand why this little thing was always bothering her. We will all miss her very much. There were no outward signs that gave us any indication that there was anything wrong with Areta. She was bright and alert and gaining weight as any young kiwi at her age should. We appreciate the nice emails and prayers for us here, and all the thoughts that have been sent our way. It’s very nice to know that Areta had such fans.
Here are some photos of her, beginning with one taken days after she hatched, and a few photos of Areta with her sister, Hiri.
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On another note, the third kiwi egg from the pair at the Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia, was fertile but the embryo died at about 28 days old. We did not think that the new pair would lay again but a nice surprise greeted the keepers out at SCBI on February 9 found that she (Rua) had laid a fourth egg! Tahi (the male) still hasn’t figured out what to do with an egg, so the egg was brought here and we put under our male, Maori. Even though Maori was not incubating an egg at the time, he was very happy to have the egg. We will not check the egg for another month but with the last egg being fertile it's probable that this egg will be fertile. Time will tell.
All of the other kiwi are doing great. Thanks again for being such great kiwi fans and my sympathy to all of you who enjoyed watching Areta growing up with us.
Weights, Eggs, Young, and Old
January 4, 2011
Happy New Year to all of our kiwi friends. Unfortunately, our kiwi embryo died over the holidays. I did not have high hopes for this egg since that it was our first attempt at artificially incubating a kiwi egg from a very early stage, but we have hopes that Nessus will lay another egg this coming year.
The first two kiwi eggs from the Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia, were infertile, which is not surprising from a very young pair, but we had a third egg, which Maori was incubating for the pair from SCBI (again their male has not figured out that he actually has to sit on the egg—again, this is not too unusual for young kiwis), but that egg appears to be fertile. Sometime in the next few weeks this egg will be transferred back to SCBI for artificial incubation by their staff. We all have our fingers crossed that this egg will hatch. It’s very exciting. This will represent a whole new genetic line for the kiwi population! I can tell you that the SCBI staff are fired up (as we are at the Zoo's Rock Creek campus) and we'll be holding our breath for the next few months.
The two girls, Areta and Hiri, continue to gain weight and are still living together. I hope to send Areta to a facility in Germany in the spring, where a male will be waiting for her to grow up. Hiri, we hope, will become the second female out at SCBI but she will be staying with us until they get some new kiwi pens built sometime this summer.
Manaia has lost some weight but not enough, so we still struggle with his diet—he does love his food. He continues to do his job as the kiwi ambassador at our Monday/Wednesday/Friday demos and win new fans. He is still as charming as ever. His younger brother Koa unfortunately still has not grown and seems to be staying around 900 grams (his two sisters both outweigh him), although we have never figured out why he did not obtain the weight and height as a normal kiwi. Other than that he seems to be a perfect “Hobbit-sized” kiwi. Since I do not believe he will ever be able to breed we are seeing if he could be become the SCBI Kiwi Ambassador. We are starting a conditioning program to evaluate if this will work. An interesting side note on Koa is that his feather coat has a more red color then his siblings, a very lovely color.
Toru is still our kiwi on public display, and he looks great, this coming year Toru will be celebrating his 37th birthday! Our oldest kiwi is out at SCBI—“Asa,” also known as “Pops,” will be at least 41 years old, but he was a wild-caught bird in 1971 so we really don’t know exactly how old he is. Pops has been doing his job out there as the SCBI Kiwi Ambassador. He is quite a calm bird but, given his age, we would like to have Koa ready to help him out with his duties.
