The thinking person’s crumpet

Blogger: Singer-songwriter and Campaign Manager for the weka, Don McGlashan

North Island weka, Photo: JL Kendrick

Wekas are the coolest bird. They’re intelligent, diffident, mischievous, and scarce. Connoisseur’s birds.  Quietly inscrutable.  Not gaudy scenery-chewers like the Kakapos or the Tuis.

If Wekas were a band they’d be The Fall, or The Monochrome Set. If they were a car they’d be one of those 1963 Mercedes 280SLs with the weird pagoda roof. Elegant and strange.  If they were a food – no, that’s stupid, they’re already a food.  Not any more though.

They’re protected.  I was in a guest house on Kawau Island once and a flock of them walked in the front door and proceeded to ignore me completely and saunter thoughtfully through every room – like a bunch of Japanese businessmen being shown around their new factory.

There’s only a few thousand left of the once plentiful North Island Grey; there’s some other varieties in the Marlborough Sounds, Fiordland, and Stewart Island; and the intriguingly named Buff Weka gets an all-over tan on some outlying islands.  Evidently they sometimes take objects and stockpile them, like Lyre Birds do. But I bet they’re not tacky like Lyre Birds.  I bet they’re connoisseurs.  I bet they only steal the best stuff.

To vote in Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year poll, go here – www.forestandbird.org.nz/poll