New Zealand ’s kererū is a wonderfully round pigeon with beautiful , changeable plumage , but it is a majestic bird with an unfortunate substance abuse . You see , it has a inclination to get absolutely hammered .

The boozy shuttlecock ’s downfall is its penchant for yield . Specifically , eating fruit and then sit in the Lord’s Day with a crop full of constituent issue that ’s prostrate to fermentation .

The crop is a part of the digestive system for some birdie . All doves and pigeons have one , and as a famously portly pigeon , the kerurū is no exception .

Faced with a surfeit of fruit , a kererū ( also known as kūkū or kūkūpa ) will overeat itself and it can thanks to the stretchy , expansile pocket that is its craw . It ’s an anatomical adaption that enables birds to eat lots of intellectual nourishment very quickly and then store it while the residual of the digestive system bring to lick on the excess of food .

The fruit go into the craw , which act like a variety of bear true laurel , and when it ’s ingurgitate full it gives pigeons that wonderfully polish up esthetic for a short while after eating . Here is where thing get a bit blotto for the kererū .

For the kererūs , it ’s a very different story .

" They were coming in perfectly drunk as can be , " said handler at the Native Bird Recovery Centre in Whangarei , Robert Webb , to theNew Zealand Herald , following an incident in 2010 when the center was delivered around 60 intoxicated kererūs . “ It was ridiculous , we were getting citizenry bringing armfuls of these flaming drunk pigeons . "

Though they might be a bit of a liability , their inebriation luckily has n’t lost them any passion among New Zealanders who award them the covetedBird Of The Year honour in 2018 .

Beyond being legend of the sesh , and beautiful to behold , kererūs are very important bird for the New Zealand landscape painting . fuck to some as “ gardeners of the sky ” , they are the only birds with a bill big enough to eat on some of the country ’s largest seeded fruits , and therefore play a pivotal purpose in dispersing flora species across the land .

The moa used to also help oneself out here , but it ’s long been extinct . incisively how long , however ? so-called “ sighting ” have been report as late as 1993 , and arecent pre - printdecided to bet into their genuineness .