Huia

This article is about the Huia, an extinct bird species. For the place, see Huia (place). For the frog genus, see Huia (genus).

Huia
Male (front) and female Huia
Conservation status
Extinct (1907)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Callaeidae
Genus:	Heteralocha Cabanis, 1851
Species:	H. acutirostris
Binomial name
Heteralocha acutirostris (Gould, 1837)
Synonyms
Neomorpha acutirostris Neomorpha crassirostris (male) Heteralocha gouldi

The Huia, Heteralocha acutirostris, was a species of bird endemic to the North Island of New Zealand. It is now extinct, with no reliable sightings since W.W. Smith saw three birds in the Tararua Ranges on 28 December 1907.

Description

The bird had blue-black plumage, bright orange wattles at the gape and white-tipped tail feathers. It was the only bird known in which the bills of the male and female were radically different. The male's beak was short (approximately 60 mm) and straight while the female's beak was long and curved (up to 100 mm), a striking example of sexual dimorphism. Huia had been little studied by Western naturalists before they were driven to extinction.

Huia Biology

Distribution and habitat

Subfossil bones of Huia have been found in several North Island sites; however, live birds were only recorded by European settlers in southern areas of the island, normally the Tararua and Rimutaka Ranges. The bird shares its name with a small community in the Waitakere Ranges, where it may have once been found. Huia moved mainly on foot, flying weakly, and would call with a shrill whistle to ensure other members of the cohort were close by. An imitation of the bird's call survives as a recording of a 1909 Huia Search Team member, Henare Haumana whistling the call (NZ Sound Archives). The bird's common name may have been derived from its call.

Diet

Sexual dimorphism of the bill structure resulted in feeding strategies that differed radically between the sexes: The male used his bill to chisel into outer layers of decaying or live wood, whereas the female probed into areas inaccessible to the male, e.g. burrows of insect larvae in living wood. Anatomy of the male bird's head and neck musculature also suggests the male could insert his bill into rotting wood and force his bill open to split the wood. Diet consisted of insects and their larvae, spiders, and small berries.

Contrary to the popularized notion, the meals were not usually shared between pairs (although it may have occasionally occurred to strengthen the pair bond; as far as it is known, the huia was monogamous). Also, the birds did generally not cooperate in feeding, at least not in a strict sense. All such reports are based on misreading of a single account by Buller, which in any case referred to a pair kept in captivity. Rather, the differing bills represent an extreme example of niche differentiation, by which intraspecific competition between the sexes was reduced. Thus, the species as a whole could utilize a wider range of food sources better. This phenomenon is not unique, but was most pronounced in the huia; woodhoopoes and some birds of paradiseshow a similar, but less extreme dimorphism, and the bills of many hummingbirds show sexual differences in length uncoupled to variations in body size, for example.

Reproduction

The breeding season was thought to be early summer, with the birds constructing a saucer-shaped nest about 35 cm across. Two to four greyish eggs of 30 to 40 mm were normally laid.

Parasites

A species of phtilopterid louse has been described from the huia. Rallicola extinctus formerly considered the only species of a separate genus Huiacola ("Huia inhabitant"), apparently became extinct with its host

Decline and extinction

Huia (male and female) on a New Zealand stamp of 1898

Several naturalists, including Buller, noted that the birds were already in decline when European settlers arrived. The Huia's distinctive white-tipped black tail feathers were often worn by Māori chiefs as a sign of their status. Such feathers were revered as taonga (treasures) by Māori. The wearing of feathers as ornaments was later adopted by Pākehā women as a symbol of social standing. The birds were inquisitive and trapped easily upon imitation of their call — in 1888, a party of 11 Māori obtained 646 Huia skins from the forest between the Manawatu Gorge and Akitio. In February 1892, regulations making it illegal to kill or take Huia were passed; however, enforcement was not taken seriously.

The visit of the Duke of York, later King George V, to New Zealand in 1901 produced a frenzied demand for Huia feathers, especially after the Duke wore a Huia tail feather in his hatband. The price of feathers was reportedly pushed to one pound each. The then Governor General, the Earl of Onslow, tried to provide further legal protection for the Huia, but the bird was reported extinct shortly afterwards. The last "official" sighting was on 28 December 1907 - but lingering reports after this date suggest the species extinction came a little later. A man familiar with the species reported seeing three Huia in Gollans Valley behind York Bay (between Petone and Eastbourne, Wellington) on 28 December 1922. Huia had been seen many times in this area before (there were also reports of sightings here in 1912 and 1913) and this area of mixed beech and podocarp forest was well within the bird's known range. However no effort was made by naturalists from the Wellington Museum to investigate.

External links

• TerraNature page on huia
• TerraNature pages on New Zealand wattlebirds
• Template:IUCN2006 Database entry includes justification for why this species is listed as extinct

Further reading

• Gill, B. & Martinson, P. (1991) New Zealand's Extinct Birds Random Century, Auckland