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Haast's Eagle (Harpagornis)
The Haast's Eagle's main food source was the Emu like-Moa.
Alex - Kiwi
Hannah- Waxeye/Silvereye
Small facts:
The white heron live off small fish, frogs and sometimes even small birds.
The Haast's Eagle was an extremely large bird with a wingspan of 2-3 meters. If it were alive today, the Haast's Eagle would be the largest eagle to have ever existed in the world.
Haast's eagles preyed on large, flightless bird species, including the moa, which was up to fifteen times the weight of itself. It is thought to have attacked at speeds up to 80 km/h, by seizing its prey with the talons of one foot and killing with a blow to the head or neck with the other. The eagle's size is thought to have a similar bodily striking force to a cinder block falling from the top of an eight story building. Its massive beak could also be used to rip into the internal organs of its prey and then kill them because of blood loss. In the absence of other large predators or scavengers, a Haast's eagle easily could have killed and eaten a single large bird over a number of days.
The Haast's Eagle died out in 1400 when the Moa, it's main food source, was hunted to extinction by early Maori.
The population of the white heron in new zealand has always been small.The first ever record of the nesting site was on the 31st of December 1865. The population at the moment is between 150-200 white herons. They are apparently not on the extinct list.
Kiwis are the only bird with nostrils at the end of its beak and lay the largest egg in relation to their body size.
They live in harbours and estuaries, where they can be left alone more.
Their diet contains of ; Insect prey, large amounts of fruit and nectar .
The White herons name in maori is kotuku.
The Kiwis diet mainly consists of small invertebrates, grubs, seeds and worms. They also sometimes eat fruit, eels, small crayfish and amphibians.
The Kiwi is about the size of a domestic chicken with females being larger than males. The have long beak with nostrils at the end of it. Kiwis have no tails and cannot fly.
The species was first recorded in 1832. Since there was no evidence of being introduced, they are classified as a native species.
There are only 5 species of Kiwi remaining, the Brown Kiwi, the Great Spotted Kiwi or Roroa, the Little Spotted Kiwi, the Rowi and the Tokoeka .
Kiwis are hunted by rats possums rats and dogs. They are also preyed on by a few members of the Mustelid family, Stoats, Weasels and Ferrets.
White heron is very rare, and sacred bird. The only nest known nesting site for white herons is on the west coast of the south island along the bank of the Waitangiroto stream deep within the Waitangiroto nature reserve. Its presumed the white herons were windblown across the tasman sea from Australia. It is not known why the white herons have only one nesting site or why its in the location it is.
Appearance:
White ring around the eye, they're olive-green on their head back and tail with a cream colour on the under head, upper breast gradually getting greyer on the belly and under tail.
The males have slightly brighter plumage than the females.
Habitat:
Wax eyes live in New Zealand at sea level up to about 1,200m altitude, in urban areas , farmland, orchards, forests and shrubland.
They are often in large flocks around winter.
The main reason for the Haast's Eagle dying out was because of the Moa's extinction, but it is also thought that they died out because of the burning of the South Island's dry forests, another theory is that Maori hunted the eagle for it's bones which have been used in the making of tools.
The Kiwis is usually a nocturnal bird. he Kiwi lives in a range of habitats from New Zealand's native forest to sometimes even mangroves. They especially like places where stands of trees run down to rivers and include pockets of wetland vegetation.
The Maori first named the bird "tauhou" meaning stranger or new arrival.
Length of 11-13 cm and around 10g in weight.
They are known as pests to people who own orchards.
They go by many names;
Waxeye, Silvereye, Blight-bird and Tauhou.
Silvereyes belong to a family called "Zosteropidae" and the order they belong in is the "Passeriformes."
Tauhou have a high pitched call.