After Reading W.S. Merwin’s The Carrier of Ladders and then finding the Extinct Birds of NZ website.

Tahi.
The first that comes to mind is the Huia,
which Sir Walter Buller said sang like a soft-flute.
The female had a long curved beak,
and the male a short one. A male and female
approached Sir Walter when he whistled,
and as they hopped slowly away his companion
shot them. Their feathers were prized
by chiefs, and long beaks too, for adornments.
Europeans admired the black tail-feathers
tipped with white. The Duke of York was given
a Huia feather when he visited New Zealand in 1902
and inaugurated a European fashion-craze
that most directly led to their extinction.

Rua.
The Moa is held up as an example of Maori
exterminating a food resource. We often hear
about the moa and the Maori in the same breath.
I agree that this bird shows up our humanity.
Dinornis Robustus stood two metres at the shoulder,
with another metre to the end of the neck.
You have probably heard that museum assemblies,
where the bird cranes to its full three metres,
are fanciful — that its head was connected
most likely to an S-bend. There were small ones
taller than a turkey. An average moa
could look a tall person in the eye.
The last ones vanished hundreds of years
ago into Maori stomachs. We are also
critiqued for the disappearances
of the giant eagle, and many other flapping
singing creatures. Moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā.

Toru.
The Giant Eagle had a wingspan of three metres —
its main food was moa. It was the world’s
largest eagle — the youngest set of bones found so far
is five hundred years old.

Wha.
The Stephens Island Wren was spread throughout
the North and South Island. Its most common relative
is the Rifleman. The only European to see one alive
was the lighthouse keeper, David Lyall, of Stephens Island
in 1894. His cat brought back seventeen similar corpses
not long after and so the bird was declared discovered and extinct
at the London ornithologists’ club meeting in 1895.

 

Glossary

Moe mai moe mai moe mai rā = Rest, rest, rest there.

Buller’s Honour

According to his entry in the New Zealand Encyclopedia of 1966,
Sir Walter walked around with a dark cloud of corrupt land court

practices connected with his “protracted” translation and mediation
services in the Manawatu purchase of 1865–66. It also says that his book

on New Zealand birds made him pre-eminent in his field.
Even I’ve heard of Buller’s birds. Again, though,

there’s a smudge (aha!) on his record —the charge that he traded
in bird skins for his collection, which contributed to their extinction.

He spent time in London and helped to organize the New Zealand
bit of the Vienna Exhibition. He also “qualifed for the Bar

at the Inner Temple”. Hence his Land Court work. He had a home
on The Terrace with Corinthian columns, and a wild-life estate in Levin.

He retired to London where he died in 1906. On his shoulders went a wealth
of letters: C.M.G., F.R.S., K.C.M.G., and honorary degrees.

Hanoverian London

I recently read a Marxist history of the city by George Rudé
to help me understand why so many English decided to leave

for New Zealand, among other places. I can see why now, and
with compassion. The historian says there aren’t many histories

of the faces in the crowd. He talked about the treatment of minority
believers, the wickedness of gin, class differences and diseases. This

was all before the great reforms of the Victorians when our people
were taken into the British family of nations to be kept as children.

It’s an old story of course retold by many such as Lemony Snicket
in his recently completed A Series of Unfortunate Events.