The first royal spoonbill recorded in New Zealand turned up at Castlepoint in 1861. It was noted and largely ignored for the next eight decades. Then, in 1949, a pair bred at the white heron colony at Okarito, and the species shifted from occasional stray to resident. Nobody arranged this. It simply happened, in the way that self-introductions from Australia tend to when the habitat is available and the distance is manageable. Kōtuku ngutupapa is, at first approach, a bird assembled with considerable confidence. All white, with long black legs, a black featherless face, and a bill that ends in a flat spatula roughly the width of a tablespoon. During the breeding season, both sexes grow long white crest plumes from the nape, raised during courtship while the birds bow to each other and clap their bills together with audible snaps. It is a formal performance conducted by animals that appear to be holding kitchen equipment. The display works, clearly, given the population trajectory. The feeding technique is practical and distinctive. The spoonbill wades through shallow water, swinging its partly open bill in slow arcs from side to side. Prey is detected entirely by touch: aquatic invertebrates, small fish, crustaceans, and frogs that contact the bill surface trigger a fast reflex snap. The method works in murky water, at any depth the bird can wade, day or night. A predator that does not need to see its food is not easily inconvenienced by conditions that would stop a visual hunter dead. From 52 birds recorded in 1977, the New Zealand population grew to over 2,300 by the 2012 national census. About twenty breeding colonies now exist at coastal sites around the country, some in tall kahikatea, some on low shrubs or the ground. After breeding, birds disperse to wetlands and estuaries throughout the country, turning up at locations from Northland harbours to Southland lagoons. The range of dispersal suggests these birds have a considered idea of where the food is. Disturbance at breeding colonies remains the main conservation concern, and some sites carry formal protection. The species is not threatened in New Zealand or globally. The wetland habitat it uses is under ongoing pressure from drainage and modification, which reduces foraging options for birds dispersing after the breeding season. For now, the available habitat has kept pace with a population that has grown by a factor of forty-five in under fifty years. That trajectory is unusual enough to be worth remarking on.