Kiwis can't fly. Their wings are so small you can barely see them - just little stumps under all that fluffy fur-like feathering. But they don't need to fly: long ago New Zealand had no land animals that could harm them, so kiwis got on perfectly well walking around on their strong little legs.
A kiwi has a superpower very rare among birds: a fantastic sense of smell. Most birds smell almost nothing. A kiwi's nostrils are at the very tip of its long beak, and it sniffs along the forest floor in the dark, listening and smelling for worms and bugs underneath the leaves.
Kiwi eggs are absolutely enormous compared to the bird that lays them. A kiwi egg can weigh up to a quarter of the mother's body weight. Imagine a human baby being born already the size of a four-year-old. Scientists have x-rayed kiwi mothers and you can see the egg taking up almost the whole inside of the bird.
Kiwis are mostly nocturnal, which means they sleep in the day and come out at night. If you visit a kiwi house at a zoo, the lights are usually dimmed and red - because in red light the kiwi thinks it's still night, and you get to see it walking around hunting.

