Homeowner's shock as kiwi turns up in suburban backyard

When Eugene Dementyev heard a tap at his back door, he thought it was a cat — and was shocked to discover it was a kiwi.

Dementyev lives in the Wellington suburb of Broadmeadows and was watching a movie with his wife when they heard a sound at the door.

"We thought it was a cat, and it did look like a cat a little bit. But then we looked closer and it was a kiwi," he told Morning Report.

"We saw it with the lights off, so we turned on the lights to have a better look and we saw it was a kiwi. It was quite large actually, I didn't expect it to be that large."

Dementyev said the kiwi was looking right at him, before it turned away.

The bird was in his back yard for a number of days, and found a place under the stairs where it slept during the day before emerging at night.

The kiwi had been released at Terawhiti Station on the southwest coast, as part of the Capital Kiwi project which aims to restore a large-scale wild kiwi population to Wellington's hillsides. The release site is about 10km from the surburb of Broadmeadows.

It's not the only kiwi to make a surprise visit in recent days. One of the flightless birds wandered into a sawmill near Whangārei on Monday morning and spent a few hours exploring before seeking out a dark spot under a workbench.

Lucas James, a sparkie at Rosvall Sawmill in Whareora, said he was still bleary-eyed first thing in the morning, and was using the drill press in the workshop when he heard a scuttling sound behind him.

"I turned around and there was a big kiwi running around the middle of the workshop. So I called all the guys, we had a look, and sort of panicked. We didn't know what to do."

They closed the workshop doors to stop it into wandering into any machinery and called a few experts for advice, including the local Department of Conservation (DOC) office.

"They took a couple of hours to come out so the first three hours of my Monday morning I was on kiwi watch, making sure it didn't get out and get squashed by anything."

The bird appeared unperturbed by its unusual surroundings, James said.

"For a start, it was quite curious, it just cruised around for a bit. But as more people came in, it got a bit stressed, so we left it alone, it ran around for a bit and found a dark corner in the workshop and sat there for a couple of hours."

He was surprised the kiwi sought out a sawmill, and could only guess it had been chased by a dog and was looking for a place to hide.

"It's quite a noisy place and there's big forklifts going around everywhere. It's the last place I'd expect to see a kiwi running around. It was a really cool experience," James said.

rnz.co.nz

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