Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, or Christopher Luxon — a sighting of any of these in Dunedin would be considered extremely rare.
And once upon a time, a sighting of Dunedin’s mysterious and mischievous weka would have been considered in the same light.
But after another weka was spotted dashing across a North East Valley street into a garden full of agapanthus this week, sightings can no longer be described as scarce as hen’s teeth.
Sarah Gallagher said she and her husband were on their way home from work about 6pm on Thursday, when a weka darted across the street in front of them in North East Valley.
"It was a bit of a shock.
"It just shot out in front of us when we were driving up Montague St.
"It tore across the road and jumped into some agapanthus in a garden."
Despite the close call, the bird’s feathers were not ruffled in the least.
It is one of many observations of weka in the city recently.
A weka has been spotted near Second Beach and the St Clair Hot Salt Water Pool, the University of Otago campus, and one was even seen going into a student flat.
Mrs Gallagher said she was not certain if this weka was the same as the ones seen around other parts of the city.
"But I can say, this one looked very healthy and happy."
It was exciting because Dunedin was the last place she expected to see one.
While weka were known to live in the region historically, there were no known weka populations in or around Dunedin at present.
However, Birds New Zealand ornithologist Bruce McKinlay said there had been official recorded sightings of weka in North East Valley and Second Beach recently.
No-one knew exactly how the birds got here.
"It’s likely that they have been put there by people.
"Someone would have had to have caught one and brought it to the area."
At the moment, there appeared to be only two birds in the city.
"But I think if a population were to establish here, a lot of people would start losing a lot of teaspoons."
Weka are known to pilfer crops, food and other small objects.
They mainly eat invertebrates and fruit, and occasionally chitons, coastal invertebrates, lizards, rodents, food scraps, carrion, and the eggs and young of other ground-nesting birds.
They have also been known to steal stuff — shoes, underwear, watches, sausages, phones, keys, bags of chips and, yes, even teaspoons.
They often take the objects to the nearest cover to investigate them.
For this reason, rather than chase them, it was best to simply watch where the weka went and retrieve the objects a little later.
"They’ve got a penchant for stealing stuff," he said.
He was pleased to see the weka were still around.
"I suspect that the reality is that those birds will get eventually killed by dogs or cats.
"But they seem to have survived so far.
"It’s interesting because it’s been a year since I’ve heard anything about that [North East Valley] bird."
• Anyone with information on how the bird ended up in the area is asked to call 0800DOC HOT.
