Cracker: A Good Week
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I like how you sneaked the engagement thing in there. Well played.
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We're being beaten by the Takehe, which is like a rubbish version of the Pukeko - it can't even breed properly.
ALOL
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I'm not voting for pukeko - or indeed any of the official bird list.
I voted for pouakai, on the grounds that it gave humans a run for their money. Aue, not enough of a run - the first lot cruelly extinguished pouakai's normal food supply, and it was one of the second lot who shot the last pair...but it was a good go while it lasted! -
Congrats, good sir.
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Well, except for the pukeko, perhaps.
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I'm not voting for pukeko - or indeed any of the official bird list.
I voted for pouakai, on the grounds that it gave humans a run for their money. Aue, not enough of a run - the first lot cruelly extinguished pouakai's normal food supply, and it was one of the second lot who shot the last pair...but it was a good go while it lasted!Always wondered what it would be like if these birds were still around - surreal visions of the standard "people walking up Main Street" TV camera shot, with a pair of featherly legs shooting down and snatching someone up...
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Haast's Eagle - I'd be all over that if it was an option...
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The moa pelvis from Pyramid Valley fascinated me as a kid -a large claw hole right through it...as someone wrote (I think Tim Flannery in "The Future Eaters") apropos the extinction of the moa, maybe the Maori actions were easily understood -after all, what did the bird, used to predating tall bipeds, do when it saw it's first Polynesian?
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Pouakai, the Taranaki connection. With pic.
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The 'hawks' that Charlie Douglas shot, had wing spans of over 9ft (the female) and 8ft 6" (the male.) While there's no skeletal evidence from the north, I dont think it at all improbable that such an impressive bird would range widely.
Incidentally, hokioi is used in the south for a bird of ill-omen, known mainly from the Titi Islands, which had/has a cry like 'the rattling of chains." It isnt ever seen: a possible candidate is the channel-billed cuckoo...
(O edity button, i do love you!) -
You missed the "I've voted" sticker on my shirt. I gave mine to the Ruru, with it's haunting call and inquiring eyes.
And a congratulations is in order for the engagement. Lovely.
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Safe travels, Damian.
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It's the tui for me; they used to hang around our house in Wellington, and I miss their songs and croaks and gurgles so much.
And congratulations! The married / civil unioned state is a fine thing.
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Hell's bells Damian, trust the wedding is not until my return, although I do urge more haste than P and my 17-year courtship.
Congrats buddy, and most especially to Rebecca.
Enjoy the snorkel!
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Congratulations on the engagement, and nice to know that there's finally something about the Super City that doesn't sound like a total waste of time and effort.
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On Monday, Wallace and I hosted a Back Benches Super City Special at the Northern Steamship Co here in Auckland.
Wish I were there.
So that was Monday. On Tuesday, I'm delighted to announce, my darling (and some would say, long-suffering) Rebecca agreed to marry me. Which was nice,
May you have many happy years together :)
Banks has come back more humble (or at least has been convinced to talk less) and kept his head down for the most part. "He get things done" tends to be what my friends tell me, and whether this is true or just a great line in spin, that's what will win him votes.
Aw, now that's where I feel let down. Can your friends (whom I would like to believe are intelligent) honestly explain just what he has done for Auckland and would your friends honestly give him another vote, or is it that we (as Aucklanders) don't know of anyone else worthy of such a position?
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There are a bunch of them outside now making a hell of a racket...
That's what makes them so special. Crazy little buggers.
This morning (GMT) there are Crows attached to a roof behind our place and a plague of Homing Pigeons on the roof next door. I'll have the Tui thanks :) -
You see, that's why I dislike the idea of a ranked list - and did my humble best to disrail it.
I love everyone from tui to pukeko to royal albatrossi to the rirerire/grey warblers currently setting up a nest in my trees.
The kaeaea who predates them (and the tui.) The putakitakiatama/toa
and the blackbirds and the bloody spoonbills -kotukungutupapa- which, until some of them spread north, *only* bred in the Waitakitaoka headwater (upside the Okarito lagoon) annnd - Maukiekie Island, Moeraki...All birds should be cherished. (And eaten, on occaision.)
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You see, that's why I dislike the idea of a ranked list - and did my humble best to disrail it.
That has to be a pun, right? Im which case, I'll vote for the whooping weka. Tim Flannery once said that he'd happily trade all of Kiri Te Kanawa's catalogue just to hear the dawn chorus as it was in this land's birdland pre-extinction heyday.
Wonder if the weka's raucous heralding of nightfall was joined by any others?. The marvellous adzebill, for example.
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Joe Groke- you always pick 'em up!
D'y'know even the reo for 'adzebill' has been lost?
When I first lived in Big O, I heard kakapo. (So did others, including an Acclimitisation Soc. officer.) They boomed late at night. in a good year (not mast - beech dont grow here.)
Wasnt only the kind of - o, we can only dream! - bird night & dawn chorus that used to be - it's also the interactions (with insects e.g.) What did the shore-dwelling NZ crow do? There were whekau round here - we know they were way noisier than ruru-
Big O is the last known place where an SI kokako has been heard - -
You see, that's why I dislike the idea of a ranked list - and did my humble best to disrail it.
Gotta agree with you there Islander.I find pleasure in liquorice all sorts :)
o, we can only dream! - bird night & dawn chorus that used to be
Heard a sad story about the Liar /lyre bird
Word ? World.That wasn't me :) -
We had a tui at Big O who perfectly imitated the -then new- sound of digital phones-
tui - & I suspect lyrebirds - are known to remember & transmit to offspring sounds.
There is a possibility - just - that they may pass on sounds on extinct birds...
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When I first lived in Big O, I heard kakapo. (So did others, including an Acclimitisation Soc. officer.) They boomed late at night. in a good year
Wow. That's the kind of tale that puts the wondrous shivers up & down one's spine.
There were whekau round here - we know they were way noisier than ruru-
You've met people who remember? I've heard tales of great-grandparents who told how their forebears witnessed/heard the "laughing owl". Despite its supposedly unnerving cry it seems to have been regarded with a special fondness. A bit like the rather more fortunate Australian barking owl. Also known as the 'screaming woman owl', thanks to the female's blood-curdling seasonal cry, which occasionally triggers emergency service callouts.
BTW, at new year 2002 in Sydney, barely ten minutes from the north end of the harbour bridge, a couple of tawny frogmouths set up their booming in a backyard tree just before midnight, and kept it up for nearly an hour. Glorious stuff.
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My Nana (Orkney bred but born in ANZ) and Grandad (Kai Tahu) were brought up in Purakaunui and Waianakarua - they *heard* whekau- and unlike ruru, it wasnt a bad omen harbinger-
(the last recent skeletal remains of which come from Trotters Gorge (just up the road from Wai nak'-)-one Jeffrey George Friend (geez, I must write something solid about him) born in Big O, remembered 'the screaming owl, big legs' (when i got to know Jeffrey, he was a permanant drunk (early 1970s, and he had baaad arthritis.)
Arnt we lucky folk!
And your last recollection is bettern gold-
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It's Takahe not Takehe, and it is a proud and noble bird that wouldn't shit on a 'swamphen'. Hmmph. Pukeko indeed.
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