Discovering our back yard

Tim Balme

We have something in common with our national symbol.

The myth is going to be dispelled that kiwis can actually fly. When I was narrating that I went “what?” As a Kiwi person we have to fly to get out of here and our national bird can fly — it just chooses not to. It’s chosen not to for so long that now it actually can’t fly.

-I just thought it was one of those strange little creatures — and it is one of the oddest birds in the world, we have to own that — but it used to fly. It flew here many millions of years ago and the point is it landed and went “you know what? I don’t need to fly there’s heaps of good food on the ground to eat, what’s the point in flying, it takes effort.”

That’s the kind of laid-back Kiwi thing that we have inherited as the human species identifying with this bird.

Think again about the humble chicken. This isn’t specific to this doco but it is made quite clear that basically birds are dinosaurs. I’ve got this place up north that we go to a lot and it’s just been invaded by a wild turkey that comes over and marauds around the house. It’s been estranged from a group of turkeys that roam around the valley. When you look at a turkey up close, they are really freaky.

Birds are basically dinosaurs; when dinosaurs were discovered, artists started producing impressions of what these big bones must have looked like and they put scales on them and all that sort of stuff — and actually they had feathers and fur. When you go to the cafe and you have poached eggs and bacon, you’re basically having dinosaur eggs and bacon. Which I find kind of interesting.

Something was big enough to take on the moa.

The other thing I love about the series is they talk about the biggest eagle that ever flew in the world — the Haast eagle — and that it was so big that it picked up small children. Maori legend has it that they tried to whisk them away, it was that big.

It was so big that it attacked moa. Moa skeletons have scars that scientists can attribute to these Haast eagles attacking them. The series takes the time to explain the scientific evidence and the process of how this came to be unearthed, but in a way that’s very accessible. The scientists are literally on the ground, sharing their knowledge in the location.

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