Porphyrio hochstetteri

The takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri), also known as the South Island takahē or notornis, is a flightless bird indigenous to New Zealand, and the largest living member of the rail family. First encountered by Europeans in 1847, just four specimens were collected in the 19th century. After the final bird was captured in 1898, and no more were to be found, the species was presumed extinct. Fifty years later, however, after a carefully planned search, takahē were dramatically rediscovered in 1948 by Geoffrey Orbell in an isolated valley in the South Island's Murchison Mountains. The species is now managed by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, whose Takahē Recovery Programme maintains populations on several offshore islands as well as Takahē Valley. The species has now been reintroduced to a second mainland site in Kahurangi National Park. Although takahē are still endangered, the population now numbers over 300 and is growing by 10% a year. Anatomist Richard Owen was sent fossil bird bones found in 1847 in South Taranaki on the North Island by collector Walter Mantell, and in 1848 he coined the genus Notornis ('southern bird') for them, naming the new species Notornis mantelli. The bird was presumed to be another extinct species like the moa. Two years later, a group of sealers in Dusky Bay, Fiordland, encountered a large bird which they chased with their dogs. 'It ran with great speed, and upon being captured uttered loud screams, and fought and struggled violently; it was kept alive three or four days on board the schooner and then killed, and the body roasted and ate by the crew, each partaking of the dainty, which was declared to be delicious.' Walter Mantell happened to meet the sealers, and secured the bird's skin from them. He sent it to his father, palaeontologist Gideon Mantell, who realised this was Notornis, a living bird known only from fossil bones, and presented it in 1850 to a meeting of the Zoological Society of London. A second specimen was sent to Gideon Mantell in 1851, caught by Māori on Secretary Island, Fiordland. (Takahē were well known to Māori, who travelled long distances to hunt them. The bird's name comes from the word takahi, to stamp or trample.) Only two more takahē were collected by Europeans in the 19th century. One was caught by a rabbiter's dog on the eastern side of Lake Te Anau in 1879. It was bought by what is now the State Museum of Zoology, Dresden, for £105, and destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in World War II. Another takahē was caught by another dog, also on the shore of Lake Te Anau, on 7 August 1898; the dog, named 'Rough', was owned by musterer Jack Ross. Ross tried to revive the female takahē, but it died, and he delivered it to curator William Benham at Otago Museum. In excellent condition, it was purchased by the New Zealand government for £250 and was put on display; for many years it was the only mounted specimen in New Zealand, and the only takahē on display anywhere in the world. After 1898, hunters and settlers continued to report sightings of large blue-and-green birds, described as 'giant pukakis'; one group chased but couldn't catch a bird 'the size of a goose, with blue-green feathers and the speed of a racehorse'. None of the sightings were authenticated, and the only specimens collected were fossil bones. The takahē was considered extinct. The third takahē collected went to the Königlich Zoologisches und Anthropologisch-Ethnographisches Museum in Dresden, and the Director Adolf Bernhard Meyer examined the skeleton while preparing his classification of the museum's birds, Abbildungen von Vogelskeletten (1879–95). He decided the skeletal differences between the Fiordland bird and Owen's North Island specimen were sufficient to make it a separate species, which he called Notornis hochstetteri, after the Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. Over the second half of the 20th century, the two Notornis species were gradually relegated to subspecies: Notornis mantelli mantelli in the North Island, and Notornis mantelli hochstetteri in the South. They were then incorporated into the same genus as the closely related Australasian swamphen or pukeko (Porphyrio porphyrio), becoming subspecies of Porphyrio mantelli. Pukeko are members of a widespread species swamphen, but based on fossil evidence have only been in New Zealand for a few hundred years, arriving from Australia after the islands were first settled by Polynesians.