Bird 211 – Takahe

As I’m sure many of you know, voting for The Guardian’s Australian Bird of the Year will soon be underway (still time to nominate a bird for the short list). 

Now, I’m not here to tell you which bird to vote for, you don’t need me for that. I want you to vote for the bird that’s in your heart. But when it comes to the far more important New Zealand Bird of the Year, I have strong opinions. As far as I’m concerned, there can be only one winner for 2021: the Takahe (Porphyrio hochstetteri).

This bird has a cool story. Before anyone (from the West) had seen a living one, their preserved bones were found in the fossil record, leading scientists to think they were long extinct. But then, just two years later in 1850, some sailors found one. Naturally, they killed it and ate it. By chance, though, they happened to run into the chap who had first studied their fossils and it soon came out that the bird was alive and well. Except it wasn’t. Only a handful of living ones were sighted after that, and in 1898 they were declared extinct.

It would be 50 years before they were again dramatically rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in the deep south of the country. Since then, a great deal of effort has gone into saving the bird. Breeding populations have been established on a collection of remote islands that are predator free, and today there are about 500 individuals.

Now, that back story aside, the Takahe is also a freak. Anyone who has caught the pod on island birds will know that when birds end up islands, evolution can really have its way with them. And if you haven’t caught the pod … what are you doing with your life?

To begin, the Takahe is the world’s largest Rail and flightless to boot. It displays two traits of island syndrome, flightlessness and island gigantism: that’s a tendency for small animals to grow large when isolated on islands. Now, they may remind you of a Swamp Hen, and indeed that’s the family they belong to. But these beefy blue and green silky birds gave up life in the wetlands and instead live in the high mountain grasslands. They’re also picky eaters. They favour the tender new growth of grass shoots. They’ll pull up grass, eat the tender bit and toss the rest away.

Is that the most efficient way to eat? No. They’re kinda like the panda of the bird world.

The Takahe is long lived and slow growing, which means they’re slow to mature and slow to breed. This has made rebuilding their numbers difficult. But while their population is still small, I believe their future is in good hands. They’ve never been crowned New Zealand’s bird of the year, and I think the time has finally come for more people to learn about these flightless swamp chickens that live in the mountains.     

19/09/2021