Pouākai

In Māori tradition the pouākai (also hōkioi) is a gigantic bird of prey that swooped from the mountains on prey, including in some stories on people. Its name is also given to the Pouākai Range on Mount Taranaki. Accounts describe a huge black-and-white bird with a red crest and large beak. When European scientists first heard the stories, many took them as exaggeration.

The tale was backed by science in 1871, when Julius von Haast described a huge eagle from bones found by Frederick Fuller in a swamp at Glenmark, Canterbury. Haast’s eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) weighed an estimated 10–18 kg, making it the largest eagle known, and preyed on moa weighing up to 200 kg. Bones have been found in Māori middens, and the bird is widely accepted as the source of the pouākai tradition.

In 2013 a team led by Paul Scofield studied CT scans of the eagle’s skull and said its anatomy showed an ambush predator that dropped from perches, with talons that could put holes in a moa’s pelvis. The eagle is thought to have vanished around 1445, after people hunted the moa, the eagle’s food, to extinction and cleared much forest.

Because Haast’s eagle is a real, extinct bird, the pouākai is a rare case where an old legend has turned out to match the fossil record. Claims that it survived into modern times are not supported by any evidence.

A huge eagle with a wingspan of two to three metres, powerful talons and a large bill; Māori tradition gives it black, white and red colours and a red crest.

Southern Alps and forests of the South Island in life; in legend, high mountain country such as the Taranaki and Canterbury ranges.

The pouākai gives its name to the Pouākai Range and Pouākai Tarns on Mount Taranaki and appears in Māori storytelling, in modern books and in museum exhibitions on the moa and the eagle.