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Kakapo

Lttle bush Moa


moa
 

The Little Bush Moa is another small species of about the same height as the Coastal Moa. It weighed around 30kg and, together with the Giant Moa ranged over most of North Island and parts of north–western and southern South Island.

The Southland Museum has the only known example of a partially complete, fully articulated, naturally–mummified Little Bush Moa, found in the Echo Valley in 1980.

 
Moa
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Taxonomy
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Dinornithiformes
Family:Anomalopteryginae
Genera:Anomalopteryx
Species:didiformis
Sub Species:

Other common names:  — 
Dinornus parvus.

Description:  — 
Extinct bird:
1.3 m., 30kg.

Where to find:  — 


Poetry:  — 
Conversation with a Moahunter
(a.k.a.The Last Moa)

Just one trout - that's all I asked.
The Opihi wasn't prepared to oblige,
so it was upriver again -
following an old trail in the mist,

past the hanging cliffs where my father & I
culled out the river shags years ago.
Up the valley to a lake bed so dry

old trees, old foundations were coming up
like springs through the stuffing.
& after an afternoon downstream,

I gave up on the river & lunched
below the limestone drawings.
Hoons in a Holden were racing

up & down Raincliff Road.
I dozed. The thunder of tires

gave way to the thunder of feet,
& beside me a moahunter
fresh from the hunt, panting.
How did it go? I asked.

Just one, he said.
Just one.

— Rangi Faith


Credit for the photograph: — 

Illustration description: — 
Transactions of the Zoological Society, Vol XI, 1883.

Reference(s): — 
Oliver, W.R.B. New Zealand Birds, 1955.

Worthy, Trevor H., & Holdaway, Richard N., The Lost World of the Moa, 2002.

Page date & version: — 
Tuesday, 26 July, 2005; ver200506
© 2005Narena Olliver,  new zealand birds limited ,  Greytown, New Zealand.
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