ANOTHER EXTINCT ANIMAL FROM THE CFZ PHOTO ARCHIVE

Whilst moseying through the CFZ archives looking for the photographs of albino birds which we posted the other day we found this - a case of huias from Kendal Museum.

The huia was an exquisite bird found only in New Zealand with black glossy feathers and orange wattles. Their beaks were sexually dimorphic, the males having stout beaks and the females curved ones. The males used their beaks to chisel into wood in search of insects whilst the female used hers to winkle out prey.

The Maori hunted the huia for it’s feathers but white settlers hunted it on mass as well as introducing predators and cutting down the forests were he bird lived and fed. It is thought to have died out in the early 20th century.

However throughout the 1920s there were continued sightings that suggests the bird may have survived.

On October 12th 1961 Margaret Hutchinson saw a huia at Lake Waikareti in the Urewera State Forest. More recently the CFZ’s Danish representative Dr Lars Thomas saw a huia in the Pureora Forest.