The Little Book of Kiwi [antikvár]

KIWI New Zealanders are famous for being Kiwis (not to be confused with 'kiwis', or kiwifruit, that exotic fruit formerly known as the Chinese gooseberry). It is a nickname that has come to embody characteristics of quirkiness and individuality, the qualities in fact of the unique native bird from which the nickname derives. A most unlikely bird — flightless, nocturnal, a bird that makes its nest in a burrow — the kiwi is an avian oddity. In a far-flung land whose isolation occurred before the arrival of predatory mammals, the kiwi evolved to take on both the niche, and to some degree the characteristics, of a mammal. It is an ornithological treasure and if one measure of a people is how they see themselves, then New Zealanders are indeed a distinctive lot given their choice of this bird as their national symbol. in the middle of the nineteenth century following European settlement, the country was aware of the need for appropriate symbols to express its identity, both to itself and the world at large. Despite strong competition from other would-be symbols such as the moa and the silver fern — New Zealanders of a century or more ago were known by a