On the gentle slope of Beacon Hill above the military town of Bulford, close to Salisbury Plain in the English county of Wiltshire, there is an immense drawing of a kiwi carved into the chalk mountain. The figure is 130 meters tall, from feet to the top of its back. The bird’s beak is 46 meters long. Underneath the figure is etched the letters “N.Z.”

As apparent from the lettering, the “Bulford Kiwi” owes its origin to New Zealand, more than 18,000 km away. The giant bird was hacked out of the hillside in 1919 by soldiers from the island country, as a project devised by officers to keep the restless troops busy and out of trouble while they waited for the ships that would take them back home at the end of World War I.

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