YESTERDAY we saw a New Zealand icon. Eventually. Took some locating and a lot of patience.

Plus avoiding about 60 Japanese tourists whose loud chatter, occasional flash (forbidden) photography and knocking on the glass of the national treasure’s windows, did nothing to encourage it to make itself known.

But finally, after waiting and hoping that everyone else would get bored at looking into darkened bushes and dimly lit undergrowth in the kiwi’s enclosure, a furtive little bird emerged. Then today we saw another. So are these kiwis common? No they’re not at all, but to see two in two days was pretty remarkable as the kiwi is a very endangered bird. The female lays an enormous egg in comparison to its body size, a quarter of her mass and weight.

We are staying in some wonderful guest houses, farms and homes on our New Zealand tour. John was fascinated that the dairy farm we stayed on only milked their cows once a day.

There has been little rain recently and this has resulted in a shortage of grass. Most dairy cows we have seen are paddock grazed. Stocked with a high density of cattle and moved to fresh grazing in a different paddock each day, but only milked in the morning.

We have struggled to get our heads round the different times in the year when the herds calve. While we always started calving in our autumn, in New Zealand, our spring is their autumn, and they will start calving in April and May. Or at least I think that is what happens. I am very easily confused.

And this morning when we were having breakfast I thought I was losing it completely when two ladies walked past with a pair of wether lambs on long leads and sporting very fetching fancy collars. The lambs that is.

Intrigued I shot out of the dining room, leaving my Eggs Benedict to transform into an egg mayonnaise bap by the time I got back. But by then I had found out that Mrs Bo Peep and her friend Mary, who were gardeners at the hotel, had hand-reared these two orphan lambs using an Alsatian bitch as a surrogate mum to keep them warm and cosy at night.

Both ladies were shocked when I asked if the lambs were destined for the freezer. Never, they replied. The lambs were pets and besides that, now counted as hotel employees. Quite a baaaargain for the hotel’s payroll.