Moa Sighting

[Dave Homewood]

On Saturday I heard this interesting piece on Kim Hill's show (Radio New Zealand National) in which she aired an old interview with a lady who saw a moa at Martins Bay, Fiordland, in 1880, and again nine years later. The audio is listenable and downloadable here:

www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday

[ngatimozart]

Paddy Feeney swore black & blue he saw a moa too There are people who reckon moose still exist in parts of Fiordland, plus there's the lost Māori tribe down there. There are areas down there where no human has ever walked, so moose maybe, a lost Māori tribe less so and moa I doubt very much. I don't reject it outright because there have been cases where animals etc., long believed to be extinct have turned up very much alive. If there are moa it'd have to be a very small and highly inbred population. Having said that, the population would have a higher intelligence than our politicians.

[Dave Homewood]

I would not dismiss it for a moment. It was a very remote area in 1880, this is long before the moose was even introduced into New Zealand. The takehe was 'extinct' from 1898 till 1948 but they were still out there surviving in the wilderness all that time, thankfully.

I am not saying these Moas are still there, who knows. But I see no reason why the last remnants of the species might have been there in remote Fiordland 133 years ago.

[ngatimozart]

I agree Dave. Yes, the Takehe is a superb example. I hunted and tramped through parts of Fiordland in the days of my ill spent youth and whilst it is a very beautiful place, it also can be a very lonely place because of its' sheer isolation. However its isolation hasn't prevented human problems occuring. When I used to wander around there in the 1970s we could drink the water out of the streams etc., & it was beautiful. Water from the Hollyford River used to go very well with whiskey. Now you can't because of giardia. In 1991 when I did the Milford Track we were told not to drink stream and river water etc., because of giardia.

So getting back to moa, from what I was told at university, moa had a large range with the large moa needing 20 square km for forage per moa. They maybe had two chicks their whole lives and their life spans were up to 80 years. Compared to other birds they were a tad thick and easy to catch. The moa hunters used to dig a shallow pit and the moa would go in but couldn't get out. It had to do with the way their legs were and their brains. The spinal column went into the back of the head not underneath like other birds and us humans, so it couldn't rotate its head like we can or a chook can. They only predator they had before humans arrived was the Haast eagle which was quite capable of lifting a full grown man. I would think that that if moa survive in Fiordland they maybe the small moa because, going by memory, I think they were the species better suited for bush living.

[Dave Homewood]

Well it was a small moa that was sighted in the interview, not the giant moa. It's interesting to hear it was a blue-grey colour, I guess a bit like a heron.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Aug 20, 2013 18:44:46 GMT 12 ngatimozart said:

Paddy Feeney swore black & blue he saw a moa too There are people who reckon moose still exist in parts of Fiordland, plus there's the lost Māori tribe down there. There are areas down there where no human has ever walked, so moose maybe, a lost Māori tribe less so and moa I doubt very much. I don't reject it outright because there have been cases where animals etc., long believed to be extinct have turned up very much alive. If there are moa it'd have to be a very small and highly inbred population. Having said that, the population would have a higher intelligence than our politicians.

You forgot about the Haast Eagle.

There is an old wife's tale that Charlie Douglas shot the very last one of them....

[Dave Homewood]

Who is Charlie Douglas?

[ngatimozart]

It is generally thought that the Haast eagle died out not long after the moa because the moa were their main prey. Having said that, if they lasted until European times, then I'm quite glad Charlie Douglas shot the last one, because an eagle that is capable of carrying off a grown man does not full me with joyous abandon. I was at the Currumbun Wildlife Park in South East Queensland 10 years ago and they have a sea eagle there. The sea eagle is quite a large and impressive bird and it was perched on a 4m post above me. I think it was probably about the size of a half grown Haast eagle. The talons on the sea eagle were impressive too.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Aug 20, 2013 20:27:41 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Who is Charlie Douglas?

You've never heard of Charlie Douglas?

If you head down to South Westland, you'll find heaps of geographical features named after Charlie Douglas.

Such as the Douglas Valley, the Douglas River, the Douglas Glacier (one of the most awe-inspiring alpine sights on the planet), the Douglas Pass, Douglas Peak, and many more.

Charlie Douglas was a Scotsman who preferred the solitude of exploring South Westland to the comfortable life with his wealthy family in Scotland.

He filled in a lot of gaps in maps of the area over a period of many years.

[Dave Homewood]

I have never heard of any of those places either, except for South Westland.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

You obviously aren't watching First Crossings on the TV right now, because if you were you'd be learning something about Charlie Douglas.

[Dave Homewood]

I find those two presenters very annoying. The programme would be good if they just shut up. It is actually on but I have the sound down.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

See what happens when you have the sound turned down? You don't hear what it is all about.


Anyway, here are some photographs taken in March 2008 flying past the Douglas Glacier just after taking off from the adjacent Horace Walker Glacier....

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Maori legend of man-eating bird is true

By PAUL ROGERS - The New Zealand Herald | 9:58AM - Monday, September 14, 2009


An artist's impression of a Haast's Eagle attacking moa. —— Image: John Megahan in the PLoS Biology.

A MAORI LEGEND about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists.

Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand.

It was said to be named after its cry and to have "raced the hawk to the heavens".

Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast's Eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago, shows their study in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Haast's Eagle (Harpagornis moorei) was discovered in swamp deposits by Sir Julius von Haast in the 1870s.

It was at first thought to be a scavenger because its bill was similar to a vulture's with hoods over its nostrils to stop flesh blocking its air passages as it rooted around inside carcasses.

But a re-examination of skeletons using modern technology, including CAT scans, by researchers at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch and the University of New South Wales in Australia showed it had a strong enough pelvis to support a killing blow as it dived at speeds of up to 80km/h.

With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing 18kg, the female was twice as big as the largest living eagle, the Steller's sea eagle.

And the bird's talons were as big as a tiger's claws.

"It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child," said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.

"They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine."

Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.

"In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation," Dr Scofield said.

New Zealand has no native land mammals because it became isolated from other continents in the Cretaceous, more than 65 million years ago.

As a result, birds filled niches usually populated by large mammals such as deer and cattle.

"Haast's Eagle wasn't just the equivalent of a giant predatory bird," said Dr Scofield. "It was the equivalent of a lion."

The eagle is thought to have died out after the arrival, 1000 years ago, of humans, who exterminated the giant moa.

The latest study shows it was a recent immigrant to the islands, related to the little eagle (Aquila morphnoides) an Australian bird weighing less than 1kg.

Remains of Haast's Eagles are rare because there never were many.

They lived only on the South Island, with probably not more than 1000 breeding pairs at any one time.

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10597177

[shorty]

Don't forget, Dave is a Cambridge person so you'll probably have to start by telling that thereis another part of New Zealand called the South Island and then work onto South Westland once he has grasped that concept!

[Dave Homewood]

I have no interest at all in climbing mountains so why should I know where all those remote places are?

I have never been to South-Westland or Southland but they are the only provinces I have not travelled to. I'm not like those Aucklanders who've never been south of the Bombays.

[TS]

Aug 20, 2013 22:10:51 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I have no interest at all in climbing mountains so why should I know where all those remote places are?

I have never been to South-Westland or Southland but they are the only provinces I have not travelled to. I'm not like those Aucklanders who've never been south of the Bombays.

Carefull Dave I've been to Bluff,Invercargill, Nightcaps ,Ohai,Wairio and all places in between and I'm from AKL......

[Peter Lewis]

I've been everywhere, man . . .

[TS]

We know.....

[Dave Homewood]

Yet another potentially interesting thread has strayed of the topic...