Ngā manu a Tānemahuta

This interactive provides a brief introduction to Māori knowledge of seven featured bird species.

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Māori knowledge of animals is underpinned by whakapapa, which in some ways works as an alternative to evolutionary theory in biology. The text is from Animals of Aotearoa: Kaupapa Māori Summaries. (A version of the text is available as a PDF in te reo Māori only or a bilingual version.)

Click on the labels for information about the animal groupings.

Transcript

Toroa

The name toroa comes from the effortless gliding flight of this manu, which was said to have been brought to Aotearoa from the 12th heaven by Tāwhaki following his battles with Whiro.

Their white feathers were among the adornments prized by Māori and kept in small carved wooden boxes, as with huia feathers.

Toroa feathers were used to make headdresses worn by rangatira, in making kites and to decorate cloaks and waka. The feathers were used as face decorations by being worn through the pierced nose septum.

Toroa wing bones were used to make tattooing tools, nose flutes, necklaces and earrings.

A young toroa would be taken from its parents and kept as a pet in a seaside village – sometimes breaking its pinions to prevent it flying away – ensuring a ready supply of feathers as well as eggs and flesh.

Toroa have salt glands and ducts connected to their bills that act as desalination systems, which makes them able to drink seawater. Their salt secretions are commemorated in a distinctive weaving pattern used in cloaks, mats and wall panels called roimata toroa – albatross tears.

Various stories and whakataukī refer to the seagoing travels of the toroa, its spiritual origins and its brilliant white plumage. ‘Me he toroa e tau ana i runga i te au’ – like a toroa gliding on the updraft – and ‘me he toroa ngunungunu’ – like a toroa nestling its head under its wing – are both compliments comparing people to the physical grace of the toroa.

Toroa feathers are a symbol of peace for Taranaki iwi. To wear a single white toroa feather in the hair was adopted as a tikanga by 19th century Taranaki prophets and political leaders Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi as a sign of their movement centred on Parihaka. They led a campaign of peaceful resistance to being unfairly evicted from their homelands to make way for Pākehā settlers.

Image: The northern royal albatross (Diomedea sanfordi) by Bernard Spragg. NZ.

Pīwakawaka/tīrairaka

The cheeky little fantail follows people and other birds through the bush, snapping up insects disturbed by the movement and taking nearly all of its prey on the wing.

It has around 20 different names – most of a reduplicated structure to mimic its repeated actions.

The pīwakawaka also features in the Māui narratives as the manu who foiled Māui’s attempt to conquer death by climbing back up through the body of his ancestor, the guardian of the underworld, Hine-nui-te-pō. By twittering with laughter at the wrong moment, Pīwakawaka woke Hine-nui-te-pō who brought her legs together, killing Māui, and death came into the world.

Its part in this story may explain why it is a bad omen for a pīwakawaka to enter one’s house.

Image: New Zealand Fantail or Piwakawaka by Rosa Stewart, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Tītī/ōi

The name tītī is mostly used for the sooty shearwater but is also a generic name for many species of seabirds – shearwaters, petrels, prions and others – that visit the shores of Aotearoa.

Tītī were dubbed muttonbird by Pākehā because the fatty meat resembled mutton. Ōi is the grey-faced petrel found in North Island habitats, also covered by the name muttonbird.

Large breeding colonies of tītī are found on the small offshore islands around Rakiura (Stewart Island). Tītī are an important food source and also used for trading with other iwi and for their feathers and down. When the squabs become very fat, they are collected from the nests. Later, when fledglings emerge after sunset to exercise their wings, they are hunted using torches to dazzle them. The manu are plucked, cleaned, boned and boiled, then preserved in their own fat – traditionally in pōhā, large bags made of kelp, but more commonly now in lidded plastic buckets.

One common tauparapara that is used to begin a mihi starts with the words ‘ka tangi te tītī ... ka tangi hoki ahau’ showing basic identification of Māori people with this ancestral food source.

Another whakataukī is ‘he manawa tītī’ to underline the qualities of a person with great endurance.

The harvesting of tītī remains an important cultural and economic activity for Rakiura Māori. There have been decades of work both politically to retain access to the resource and in partnership with scientists to study the manu and ensure its sustainability.

Some whānau still harvest ōi on the Mokohinau Islands (off Ruakākā) and Aldermen Islands (off Whitianga).

Image: Sooty shearwater, Kaikōura by Sabine’s Sunbird. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Kōtare

Kōtare are highly versatile manu and have survived drastic human environmental changes. They live in native and exotic forests, on farmlands, by lakes and streams and on tidal mudflats.

In the 1870s, the Acclimatisation Society of Whanganui introduced a bounty for killing kōtare because they were attacking the sparrows that the society had recently gone to great efforts to introduce from Europe and Australia. Thus the kōtare are part of a larger story about the disastrous Pākehā enthusiasm for importing birds and all manner of other fauna and flora and the history of Māori protest against these actions.

Māori compared a kōtare to a watchful sentry, and a high lookout platform in a pā was referred to as a kōtare. Kōtare squabs (fledglings) were taken and cooked in hāngī, while the brilliant blue feathers were in demand for use to decorate clothing and for fishing lures.

The saying ‘he kōtare koe’ is used of a person who turns up and watches others eat in the hope of getting some – a comparison with how a kōtare sits motionless on a branch, its gimlet eyes searching out food.

Māori children, on seeing a kōtare nest tunnel, would call ‘putaputa kōtare, putaputa kōtare’ (come out kōtare, come out kōtare) and also sang a rain ditty about the kōtare, seen as an omen of fine weather on the way.

Image: Todiramphus sanctus (Sacred Kingfisher), Auckland Museum Collections, CC BY 2.0.

Tūī/kōkō

Tūī, also known as kōkō, are famous songbirds. To say of someone ‘me he korokoro tūī’ (a throat like a tūī) is to compliment their good singing.

Tūī also have amazing powers of mimicry, readily imitating the songs of other birds or any other sounds they hear. Young male tūī were kept as mōkai or pet birds by Māori, fed on berries and roast kūmara and taught to speak. Some tūī learned to recite 40 words or more.

Talking tūī were highly valued by their owners and listened to with keen interest by the kin group since they were believed to have oracular powers. There are stories of gifted tūī that could recite incantations and whakapapa, and one tradition tells of a war caused by the theft of a learned tūī.

A term of endearment for a pōtiki (youngest child of a family) might be ‘he kōkō iti’ – a little tūī. These Māori traditions persisted into the 20th century.

Image: Tūī in harakeke. Public domain.

Rūrū/koukou

Rūrū are nocturnal predators that have also adapted to live in farmland and urban areas.

They are often associated with spirits, and many families have a rūrū as a kaitiaki or guardian conveying messages from atua sources with the power to protect, warn and advise.

Ngāti Wai at Whangaruru in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland) have a kaitiaki known as Hinerūrū, whose calls and flight behaviour can be interpreted as either good or bad news.

Watchmen standing guard over a pā at night were likened to rūrū, hooting a warning. People who have lost love might also compare themselves to the mournful sounding rūrū.

Image: Ruru/morepork by JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Kererū/kūkū/kūkupa

As is common for birds, these names for the native pigeon are onomatopoeic – imitating their soft cooing of alarm. Kererū are placid creatures, easily approached and usually silent.

The kererū is one of the forms adopted by the shapeshifter Māui, so that he could follow his mother Taranga to the underworld and meet his father.

The main kererū season was autumn and winter after they had gorged on miro berries. Many birds were taken while they were fat and preserved as huahua manu for future use.

Image: Kererū standing on a rock by Pseudopanax. Public domain.