THE HUIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1174, 20 November 1913, Page 4

THE HUIA.

THE REPORTED DI3

COVERY

A solitary specimen of the huia, from the description a female bird, is said to have been seen in the Molu district, inland from Gisborne. The report is so far circumstantial in that it describes the curved shape of the bird’s bill,»but there it ends, as the huia, or whatever it was, did not wait till the band of the fowler closed upon it (comments the Eyttelton Times). It seems exceedingly improbable that the bird could have been a huia, for this species has never been found so far north. Its haunts have been the mountains which run northwards from Cape Palliser,

the Rimulaka, Tarann and Ruabine ranges, and the Kaimauawa rages between Taupo and Hawke’s Bay. If it ever lived as far north as the Urewera forests it has long been extinct there. The Motu is a large expanse of rough hilly country almost entirely covered with forests, the watershed between the Poverty Bay and Opotiki districts. It has abundant bird life, and it is au old hunting ground of the Maoris, who as far as is known have never caught or killed huias there.

The reputed discovery is worth further injury, but it hardly warrants a Government bird hunting expedition. There have been several of these wild huia chases, at considerable expense, but not a solitary feather of the desired bird rewarded the searchers. One party even bad elaborate wicker work cages mr.de for the imprisonment of the birds which it was intended to transport to the Little Barrier Island sanctuary, and these cages were carried with much tribulation far into the mountains —a piece of pakeha enterprise which aroused some mirth among the Maoiis, who regarded it as inviting illluck, or as the pakeha himself would say, counting one’s chickens before they were hatched. Many Maoris declare that the last of the huias were killed about 1900, just before the present King visited Rotorua, when regular hunts were organised by the natives living at Maowhango aud elsewhere between Taupo and the Ruahiues, for the purpose of procuring the tail feathers as chieftaiuly head decorations. There is no doubt that a number of birds were slaughtered at that lime. There is, of course, just a possibility that a stray family or two may survive iu the more northern forests, where the gun is seldom heard, but the probabilities are all against that possibility. The native blue crow, the kokako, has frequently been mistaken for the huia.