An'extinct' prehistoric bird returns to the wild

Tà Tipene O'Regan, 84 years old, leaned into his carved walking stick and reached down to a large wooden box

- Tess McClure

He paused a second, then slowly lifted the lid. Out shot the hefty body of a bright turquoise bird, legs windmilling, launching from its cage like a football from a slingshot.

"I am now largely blind, but I still saw them," O'Regan said: a flash of blue feathers and bright red legs racing for the tussocks.

That streak of colour was the takahe: a large, flightless bird that was believed for decades to be extinct. Eighteen of the birds were released last month in the Lake Whakatipu Waimãori valley, an alpine area of New Zealand's South Island, on to slopes they had not been seen roaming for about 100 years.

Like a number of New Zealand birds, takahe evolved without native land mammals surrounding them, and adapted to fill the ecosystem niches that mammals would occupy. They are flightless, stand at around 50cm tall, and live in the mountains. Their presence dates back to at least the prehistoric Pleistocene era.