A kiwi paid a late-night visit to Northland woman Laura Jerome's Doves Bay home, where it hunted around on her deck for about an hour.

Laura Jerome was home alone.

With her husband away on business, it was just her and their three dogs at home in Doves Bay, near Kerikeri.

So she was frightened when the sound of footsteps on her deck woke her at 2am on Friday.

Laura Jerome The kiwi spent about an hour poking around on Jerome's deck before heading back to its home in the bush.

Then the dogs, which had been sleeping in the living room, started to bark.

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Was it an intruder? A burglar? Jerome decided there was only one way to find out.

"I was actually quite scared because I thought there was a human out on the deck," she said.

Steeling herself, she put on her dressing gown and crept out of the bedroom to investigate. In the living room, she switched on the outside lights to reveal...

A small, startled kiwi.

"Sitting there, right beside me pretty much, was the kiwi," Jerome said.

"My iPhone was just on the table so I took some pictures of it and then it just started walking about."

Realising the lights were probably scaring the bird, she turned them off and went back to bed.

But from her bedroom she watched the bird "scuffling around" on the deck for about an hour.

Jerome said there is plenty of bush around where she lives and seeing a kiwi at night is not uncommon.

She and her husband made sure their property was well fenced to stop their dogs getting into the bush and this was the first kiwi she had seen on her property

"We're very lucky here, where we are there are quite a lot of kiwi and we see them quite regularly.

"We've only just moved to this area about a year ago, and to hear them most nights and see them - it's mind-blowing, I think," she said.