A Curious Contender
Guest Blogger: Alex Milne, Campaign Manager for the South Island Kokako
The South Island kokako deserves this title for its shear tenacity. Despite claims of extinction for the past 40+ years, it keeps popping up. Sightings are invariably chance encounters by hunters and trampers. Others hear resonating haunting calls that carry and linger.
Though organ song is seldom heard, it etches itself into the minds of those privileged enough to hear it. In the words of West Coast identity Charlie Douglas in 1892 “ The cry of the crow is indescribably mournful . The wail of the wind through a leafless forest is cheerful compared to it. Perhaps the whistling of the wind through the neck of an empty whisky bottle is the nearest approach to it, and is sadly suggestive of departed spirits. Few people are aware that the crow is a song bird as it is only in the depths of the forest they can be heard to perfection. Their notes are very few but are the sweetest and most mellow toned I have ever heard a bird produce.”
Fate seems determined to retain the ‘grey ghost’ as a bird of mystery. A feather found on Stewart island in 1986 and identified at museum level as that of kokako, was lost overseas when sent for testing. The only recordings of full organ song (Charleston 1998) went up in smoke with the owners home. For a cash strapped DOC, the intractable south island kokako became an unwanted distraction. An extinction status slapped on it in 2004 solved the problem- paff . This status is nothing more than a label of convenience in response to a thinly spread and cryptic time-waster. And while this status removes the problem for those who stare out of office windows, it creates them for those in the field. People are reluctant to report sightings least they be “…cast in the same mould as people who claim to be abducted by aliens” says Jim Greeks of his sighting .
The best sighting in many years came in March ’07 in a 1500ha ‘mainland island”, intensively trapped as a condition of a mining concession. Soon after hearing a haunting resonating call, an unusual bird landed 10-15m away and was observed for ½ a minute. “ .. the plumage of the bird was steely grey with a bluish tinge. Most distinct were the wattles on the sides of its bill. The base of the wattles was a deep matt blue, the remainder a ‘fleshy orange-brown’.” Yet such is the muddled thinking caused by his ‘extinct’ status, DOC have recently taken a cash hand-out in lieu of continued trapping in this area.
There are options for SIK. We have a decade of successful management of north island kokako to call on; remote recording systems offer new techniques for capturing calls,; there are good recent sightings to work from. The calls of the south island kokako have been part of NZ’s bush song for million of years. Let this year be the year be the start of a new era that will ensure these calls linger into the future….
