The wattlebirds of New Zealand are not found anywhere else in the world, and the huia was unique as the only bird in the world with completely different beak forms in the male and female. The ancient Callaeidae family flew to New Zealand 60 million years ago, and like many of the birds in the isolated archipelago, huia adopted ground feeding habits in an ecology devoid of mammals.

 

“Huias were very plentiful and were to be seen on all the fallen logs until the bush fires of 1898 killed most of them. The last ones I remember seeing alive were in 1899.” Mr J.B.Tait, a pioneer dairy farmer at Forty Mile Bush