- The huia's white-tipped black feathers were worn by people of high rank, and were kept in a special carved box called a waka huia.
- Kiwi meat was eaten by chiefs. Kahu kiwi (cloaks) were made from kiwi feathers.
- Tūī can imitate other birds and people. ...
- Kākā had red feathers under their wings.
what makes these birds so special?
Among the panoply of lions, wallabies, bears and eagles that represent their countries, the unprepossessing kiwi stands (as opposed to flies) above the rest, for no other creature has given its name to both a nation's inhabitants and its culture. The fact that this remarkable feat is probably the result of an Australian initiative only makes the symbolic rise of the kiwi more ironic, given trans-Tasman rivalries.
A more unlikely candidate for national stardom cannot easily be imagined. If the camel was concocted by a committee, responsibility for the kiwi must surely have fallen to a minor subcommittee. A walking stick for a beak, whiskers of a cat, legs of a kickboxer, wings of a hummingbird, an ostrich's egg and a hedgehog's snuffle-little wonder 19th-century ornithologists regarded it with incredulity.
For all its eccentricities, the kiwi was well adapted to its natural environment. For tens of millions of years, it quietly got on with the business of keeping the insect and worm population under control. The arrival of humans on the scene, however, presented some major changes. One of these was the threat of extinction, which the kiwi ignored for the time being. The other was the prospect of gainful employment. As it happened, the kiwi proved the right bird for the job.
Within a few years of settlement, colonial New Zealand went in search of an identity. Part of the natural process of growing up, this need for self-definition was particularly urgent in a country conscious of its youth and isolation. New Zealand needed symbols, and could draw on two rich sources: the old world and the new environment.
The first category included a range of lions, crowns and royal regalia, and offered a sense of tradition and history that the young colony so obviously lacked. Alongside these imports were home-grown alternatives which exploited the country's natural features and the culture of its indigenous people.
The ubiquitous bush, now threatened by axe and match, was such a source. But if New Zealanders were hoping for an antipodean equivalent of the British lion or American eagle, they were to be disappointed. Denied any noteworthy mammals by the untimely break-up of Gondwana, the local field of exploitable animals consisted largely of birds. Kiwi, kea, kaka, tui, moa and huia all became popular images in due course, but the last two were eventually disqualified on the grounds of extinction. Although the huia had only recently departed, the moa came to be regarded as too much of an archaic oddity to qualify for iconhood.
Had it been speed and colour New Zealanders were after, the kea and kaka would have fitted the bill. Had we opted for elegance, there was the tui, with its melodious call and chic plumage. That the kiwi prevailed suggests that rugged individuality was the virtue we cared most about, and certainly one essential to any emigrant contemplating a life in the colony.
