If he thought the same of our birds, you have to assume his idea of a nice pillow was the Zoological Society’s Gardens in Regents Park, London, to which he dispatched two huia. (It’s possible Keulemans visited here when he made his illustrative studies for Buller’s books.) Incredible to think of the female huia in the London parrot house, between a toucan and a hornbill, fed boiled eggs, fresh meat and worms. Its fate? Buller: ‘It died in a much emaciated condition.’
Better to have shot it. Truly. Without Buller and his ilk, no physical record might exist of birds that were headed for a fall. I asked Brian Gill, the softly spoken and eminently sensible curator of birds at the Auckland Museum, whether we are in debt to the shotgun politics of collectors. He said, ‘That legacy in terms of reaching the public, inspiring by way of education – what a valuable thing it’s been.’
The museum has 13,000 bird skins; Te Papa and the Canterbury Museum each have about 20,000. These days, the majority of fresh skins come from dead birds picked up on beach patrols. Would it be good to have more collecting of perfect specimens in the field? ‘In some cases it might be,’ Gill said. ‘A classic situation would be the rock wren. New Zealand wrens are incredibly important birds. The latest DNA work is showing that they are the sister group to all the other passerines, the perching birds, which are a huge group of birds, and the first branch of their evolutionary tree were the New Zealand wrens. They’re the most primitive survivors. They are incredibly important ornithologically; they’re like living fossils. The rock wren is very rare and probably declining. There are almost no specimens left in our collection. Museums asked for permission to collect them and were turned down. I think that’s short-sighted.’
Hurry now while stocks last. With the huia, Buller charged in when he could – and even after he couldn’t – once bagging 16 in a single shooting spree. What an exquisite bird it was, about the size of a magpie, black with a shiny green gloss, its bill ivory white, a rich orange wattle adorning the female. It hopped, bounding along forest floors in the Ruahine, Tararua and Rimutaka ranges. Its astonishing feature was the weird and very rare nature of its sexual dimorphism; Sir Richard Owen, when he first studied the remains of a male and female huia, thought they were two completely different species. The sexes of most birds look exactly the same, but the huia went right out there, the male short-billed, the female with its bill curved in a long, elegant parabola. Exquisite, and dead and buried, the last definite report in 1907, although unconfirmed sightings have been as agonisingly recent as 1960.
Buller thought that hunting had once caused a decline in population. He was right. In 1888, though, he claimed, ‘The bird is now far more plentiful.’ He remains the wrongest person in the history of New Zealand birds.
Heron (blue, white-faced)
A visitor from Australia
THE PESTILENCE OF rat and possum, the years of slash and burn, and the Buller years of cultural imperialism gave the birdland of New Zealand a sound thrashing. Recovery has been slow. There are still far too many endangered species, and birdwatchers need to maintain an eternal vigilance against the threat of environmental damage. But the worst years of bust are over. New Zealand is now enjoying the boom years. It may not last – declining populations of some birds offer depressing truth about global warming – but New Zealanders are holding onto birds for dear life.
Eradication programmes of predators such as the possum and the rat are proving effective. The regeneration of native bush is proving effective. And inland bird sanctuaries in Karori, Waitakere, Mount Bruce and most recently Maungatautari Mountain, as well as the island sanctuaries on Tiritiri Matangi, Kapiti and Motuara, are proving spectacularly effective. In 2006, a member of parliament, Marian Hobbs, threatened to quit the government when the Cabinet rejected an ambitious six-million-dollar bid by the Karori sanctuary to provide a visitors’ centre. Hobbs had lobbied hard for the cash: ‘You can’t imagine how hurt I feel having fought this through. It’s embarrassing. It’s bloody hurtful.’ If she had made good her threat, the possible loss of her Wellington electorate would have seriously damaged Labour’s fragile alliance. A government for a stitchbird.
Offshore, a previously unknown population of snipe have appeared on Campbell Island in the subantarctic; in towns and cities, native birds such as the tui are more abundant. It’s led to a growing and overt love affair that New Zealanders are feeling towards their own birds.
In 2005, the tui won a Royal Forest and Bird public poll as New Zealand’s favourite bird. The following year, the total number of votes tripled. This time the winner was the fantail. In both years, the top ten were a who’s who of native species – our emblematic birds, almost all birds of the bush, the exalted K club of kiwi, kakapo, kokako, kea, kereru (New Zealand pigeon) and korimako (bellbird). Expect the kaka to feature in next year’s list – urban sightings of that large antique parrot are becoming frequent.
All well and good, except that it’s inspired that reflex kick that is always itching for release: nationalism. Native birds – the K club, and the tui, fantail and a few other obvious candidates – are seen as the only birds that truly count. Hence, almost the only time we hear about birds in New Zealand is when they’re under threat. While the conservation movement utters a
