Well, according to 64-year-old cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy he believes they are.He has found what he believes to be the footprints of the smaller Scrub Moa (Anomalopteryx didiformis) in the remote Urewera Range. He made casts of the prints and matched them to a male Scrub Moa at the Auckland Museum. Moa belonged to a group of birds called Ratites, which includes Emu's, Ostriches and the Kiwi.
Reports still trickle in to this day about these large flightless birds
from across New Zealand. In 1993 Paddy Freaney, a former member of the British Army's elite Special Air Service (SAS), witnessed a large Moa in the Craigieburn Valley in Canterbury. His photo attracted international attention. Following the Moa, he snapped its picture from a distance of 40 metres. Was it a Moa? I for one believe that smaller Moa will be found some day hiding deep within the New Zealand interior. Always fascinated with the Moa, I have studied them for years. In 2006 I carved a Moa skeleton, one bone at a time. It stands 2 feet tall. And here you can see the football size of an actual Moa egg.
As you will be well aware at the time "The Gilroy Tracks" created alot of controversy as I was informed by reliable sources that there were an abundance of escaped Emu in the area. Rex went in the following year and found "bigger" tracks to disprove this.
ReplyDeleteThe jury is still out on the Urawera Moas.
I too do believe some of the smaller species of scrub moa roam the bush but the only like;y areas now are the highlands as they have been forced back by mans or Fiordland which is nice and remote and very unexplored. If Moose can hide there so could Moa.
Most impressive skeleton. I recently myself obtained a couple of small verified fragments of a Moa egg.
A detailed retrospective of Paddy's moa sighting and the aftermath can be read in the new issue of Animals & Men.
ReplyDeleteI for one believe that he saw something 'moa like' whether it was an actual moa it's had to say as the photos are quite blurry. It defiantly wasn't a deer as one sceptical commentator said. Two legged feathered long necked deer witch look uncannily like birds are even rarer than moas ;)