 |
 This postcard was part of a student prank early last century.
Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) “hunts” a moa in Dunedin’s Woodhaugh Gardens.
|
| |
The Stout–legged Moa was a squat bird with short legs and broad pelvis lived in most parts of the South Island and a few northern regions. It was the dominant species east of the Alps in the South Island and and the coastal areas of the South eastern North Island. This bird is larger than the Coastal and Eastern Moa.
The Coastal Moa, the Eastern Moa and the Stout–legged Moa had a diet probably dominated by fruit and leaves and larger insects.
All Moa species, as in all birds, had a syrinx, bird’s vocal organ. Worthy and Holdaway postulate that because the Coastal Moa, the Eastern Moa and the Stout–legged Moa, together with the Upland Moa had the smallest olfactory chambers, they had the greatest vocal abilties. They perhaps needed loud calls in their mixed dense grassland, shrubland and forest environments.
|
| |
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
| Taxonomy |
|---|
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Dinornithiformes |
| Family: | Emeiae |
| Genera: | Euryapteryx |
| Species: | gravis |
| Sub Species: | |
| Other common names: — |
| E. geranoides.
|
| Description: — |
| Extinct bird: |
| Poetry: — |
Tenei, E tama! Te whakarongo ake nei ki te hau mai o te korero,
Na Tu–wahi–awa te manu-whakatau i mau mai i runga i a Tokomaru
Parea ake ki muri i a koe, he atua korero ahiahi.
Kotahi tonu, E tama! Te tiaki whenua, ko te kura-nui,
Te manu a Rua-kapanga, i tahuna e to tipuna, e Tamatea,
Ki te ahi tawhito, ki te ahi tipuna, ki te ahi na Mahuika,
Na Maui i whakaputa ki te ao;
Ka mate i whare huhi o Reporoa, te rere to momo
E tama – e – i!
Listen, my son, for I hear rumours spoken
That the manu–whakatau was brought here
By Tu–wahi–awa on the Tokomaru canoe.
Reject this story as an idle tale.
One guardian only, O son, had this land,
The Kura–nui, the bird of Rua–kapanga.
Destroyed by your ancestor, by Tamatea, with subterranean and supernatural fire,
The fire of Mahuika, brought to this world by Maui.
Thus were they driven to the swamps and perished;
Thus was the species lost, O son
Transactions of the NZ Institute, Vol. XLVIII, 1916, 426-434. |
| Credit for the photograph: — |
| 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 |
|
