This lithograph depicts a pair of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most esteemed extinct bird: the huia. The detailed hand-colouring highlights the metallic sheen of the huia’s plumage and their distinctive orange wattles that hang from their beaks like droplets of wax. Central to Elizabeth Gould’s composition is the birds’ striking sexual dimorphism: the male has a short, sturdy beak while the female’s is curved long and slender like a scythe. This feature was unique among songbirds worldwide and enabled cooperative foraging.

The huia’s feathers and tail plumes were symbols of mana and worn by rakatira. A well-known whakataukī ‘He huia kātaka’ (a huia in full feather) praises someone of exceptional status and beauty. Yet this reverence also contributed to its extinction. Following the gifting of feathers to the Duke of York in 1901, huia adornment became fashionable among European men, accelerating hunting for museums, trade and trophies. Habitat loss and introduced predators further contributed to decline. The last confirmed sighting was in 1907. Produced within the vast realm of nineteenth-century scientific classification, this image belongs to the colonial impulse to collect, name and preserve, entangled in the huia’s extinction.

Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith, writer, artist and poet

mana ~ prestige, respect, authority, control

rakatira ~ person of high rank, chief, leader

whakataukī ~ proverb, saying, aphorism

(Bird Land: Te Kāhui Manu 15 August 2026 – 8 February 2027)