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.

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

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, 27 May 2014; ver2009v1

 
 
 

©  2005    Narena Olliver,    new zealand birds limited,     Greytown, New Zealand.