Pukeko on the menu at Wild Food Festival

If you fancy a taste of pukeko swamp hen, known to many Kiwis for its often-fatal motorway incursions, head to the Wild Foods Festival in Hokitika next month.

The festival will be offering free samples of pukeko from a cull of the birds on the West Coast where they are considered a pest by some farmers and landowners.

The bird cannot be farmed or sold but Megan Wilson, one of the organisers of the Wild Food Festival next month, said about 120 birds would be cooked and free samples would be offered during the festival on March 12 and 13.

"It is absolutely delicious. It looks like venison and raw it is quite a red meat. It tastes like a cross between lamb and venison, very gamey lamb is how I would describe it." said Ms Wilson who was given a pre-festival taste.

She said every year pukeko were culled on the Coast because of the damage they did to grain and vegetable crops.

After the cull the brightly coloured purple and black feathers were offered to local iwi but the bodies were usually dumped, she said. This year they were offered to a local man and cooked samples would be given away at the festival.

She said the pukekos were not protected birds but like trout, they could not be sold, although there was a season where people could shoot their own. Pukekos were believed to have become established in New Zealand about 1000 years ago.

They eat a variety of swamp and pasture vegetation, insects, frogs, small birds and eggs. The festival was expected to attract 15,000 people who would sample traditional wild foods such as live and cooked huhu grubs, whitebait, locusts, grasshoppers and crickets, worm truffles, deep fried shark, pickled and raw punga.

It could be washed down with a range of drinks, including Moonshine in a drench gun and honey mead.