News from Lake Te Anau

New Zealand used to be full of flight-.ess birds, including the giant moa twelve feet tall. They had scrapped their flying apparatus because they didn't need it; there were few ground enemies to zoom away from. But when man (first the Maoris, then the whites) arrived in New Zealand, bringing along dogs, cats and rats, the flightless birds had a tough time. Some went the way of the dodo.

One of the sufferers was the takahe (Notornis hochstetteri), a bird 18 inches tall with a bronze-green breast and rudimentary wings. According to Maori tales, it had once made plentiful good eating, but only four were ever killed by white men. One was dragged out of the bush by a dog in 1898 and sold to the New Zealand government for $1,000. That was the last; for 50 years the takahe was officially extinct.

This fall the footprints of a big unknown bird were found in the wild mountainous country near Lake Te Anau on South Island. Dr. Geoffrey Orbell, a physician from Invercargill, led an expedition to look for it. They climbed up into the wilderness close to snowline. At last Dr. Orbell saw what looked like a takahe. Battling his excitement he crouched to take a picture while the other members of the party, two men and a girl, crept cautiously around and threw a net over not one, but two takahes.

After photographing the birds carefully, Dr. Orbell let them go and returned to civilization in a state of ornithological ecstasy. If the Lake Te Anau country could conceal for 50 years a bird as big as a takahe, enthusiasts feel that it may have moas too, perhaps even giant moas twelve feet tall.

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