THE BIG BIRDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 16

THE BIG BIRDS

PYRAMID VALLEY, by Roger Duff; Association of Friends of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch. Price, 5/-. N spite of a recent rediscovery of the Takahe or Notornis there can be little doubt but that the giant Moas of ancient New Zealand are as properly extinct as the dodo of Mauritius. But that is no reason why they should be forgotten; and how nearly they can be brought to life again is shown by the attractive and inexpensive book here noticed. The

a Ane? a ad recipe seems to be a generous landowner, energetic and organised excavation, museum technique and study, a lively imagination, a facile pen, sympathetic artists and photographers, an enterprising producer and printer, and a far-sighted Association of Friends to back the venture. Roger Duff has had all these ingredients at his disposal in the venerable Canterbury Museum, and the result is good. The Pyramid Valley swamp in North Canterbury in which the bones and other remains were first examined in 1939 has proved to be the most valuable in a long history of Moa excavations. Their late discovery has made it possible to disinter them with critical care, to analyse the deposit and everything in it, and generally to build and test theories about how the birds lived and how they met their death. Most of them foundered in a slowly drying shallow lake over which a treacherous crust had formed, and their bones remained compact enough to hold samples of undigested food packed in with gizzardstones, and even shells of eggs formed and ready to lay. The story of the excavations is told in detail, and the scien- tific results are skilfully blended into a narrative which maintains the quality of a good thriller. There are no exact answers to all the questions that can be asked about Moas and other extinct New Zéaland birds, but a great advance in our knowledge has been made at Pyramid Valley and more is to be expected. The reader of this book can at

least be assured of being up-to-date. A word should be added about the illustrations, which are profuse "and well-selected. Diagrams are effectively used in a time-scale and photographs cover the topography of the country, the

excavations, the activities of the excavators, and many of the more striking specimens. There is particularly good use of photography in the case of some cf the massive skulls, helped by such arresting captions as "Dinornis .... + probably required as much grass per day as a bullock." Someone should have restrained the exuberant cover artist from giving the dying Dinornis a neck like a swan, but that is only a minor blemish in the best popular book to date on the

Moas.

R.A.

F.