This shy and retiring bird is flightless but can swim across a kilometre or more of water.  The North island Weka is brown, streaked black with a greyish tinge below and has a sturdy short bill and brown legs.  The call is a loud repeated ‘ coo – eet’, rising in pitch. 

Weka eat by using their bills to flick leaf litter aside and take mainly invertebrates such as worms, beetles and snails, fruit, seeds, lizards, carrion and the eggs and young chicks of seabirds and ground – nesting birds.

Breeding can occur throughout the year if conditions are suitable with the peak period between August and January.  The nest is a bowl of dry grasses lined with finer grasses, feathers, moss or wool on the ground in a hollow under or inside logs, rocks or in thick vegetation.  Clutches of 2 – 5 cream or pinkish coloured eggs are incubated by both parents  for 26 – 28 days.  Chicks are fed for 6 – 10 weeks and disperse at 3 – 4 months old.

Here on Tiritiri Matangi Island there is only one Weka who mysteriously arrived on the island approximately 18 years ago.  Despite efforts over the years to catch him he remains ‘footloose and fancy free’.  More often heard he is occasionally seen early in the morning skulking through the undergrowth.

Photography by:  Max McRae ©

References: Heather, B.D.; Robertson, H.A. 2000 The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand. Auckland, Viking.