hopped off.
A deckhand threw Bell a taut line, then fastened tight the cage of wrens. Hand over hand, Bell hauled the last six hopes for the Steadâs bush wren across the chasm and into his arms. Stepping delicately, he carried them to the edge of the scrub and opened the cage. There was nothing more that anybody could do for them now.
It was now Bellâs turn to be rescued. He scrambled to the edge of the rock, tied a rope around himself, and into the raging winter water of the Southern Ocean he jumped. The cold shock knocked him breathless. The crew hauling fast on the rope nearly drowned him en route. By the time he was pulled aboard, Bell was red as a lobster and shivering uncontrollably.
Bell would ultimately recover; the wrens heâd tried to rescue would not. Over the next few years crews would return to check up on the little refugees, with dispiriting results. Merton saw his last bush wren in 1967. A single bird was sighted again in 1972, for the final time.
And that was that. In a flash of history, even as the birdsâ would-be rescuers had looked on, New Zealand and the world had lost three species to eternity, hanging on to a fourth only by a hairbreadth and a Herculean effort. The catastrophe at Big South Cape had vindicated Bell and Merton, the messengers of doom. It had served the ivory tower skeptics a sobering lesson in island ecology, a world where rats would be kings.
For Merton the die had been castâif not with the dead albatross of Taiaroa Head, if not with the petrel slaughter on Maria Island, then certainly with the storming of Big South Capeâs matchless sanctuary. New Zealandâs embattled fauna was not to be saved by sifting through the smoldering ruins and praying for survivors. Its rescue demanded intervention against the invaders, head-on and with violence as needed. Somewhere out there more Big South Cape massacres were brewing. Somewhere out there the last of the natives were still clinging to the shreds of their homeland, with alien predators closing fast. And most conspicuous among the missing was the bird that Richard Henry had left for dead.
Chapter 5
THE NIGHT PARROT
I N THE YEARS following Henryâs heroic defeat, the kakapo had slipped into the murky netherworld of hearsay and phantom noises in the night. The latest wave of killer stoats and cats had chased the last of the kakapos to the highest, coldest, most rugged, and least inviting corners of New Zealand. Hunters and road crews pushing into Fiordlandâs final frontier would occasionally come back mentioning that theyâd heard that haunting heartbeat from the hillsides. It wasnât until 1949 that a team from the New Zealand Wildlife Service, in a Fiordland expedition searching for exotic elk, returned with a report of having actually seen, among other things, two kakapos.
The kakapo by any measure was no longer even remotely that ubiquitous voice of the New Zealand outback, whose drummings and screamings had rudely awakened the explorers in their camps, whose tragically grounded trust had once fed their expeditions with easy meat. Over the next decade, having finally come to realize that nobody on Earth could now reliably locate a single living kakapo, the Wildlife Service mounted a succession of searches. Deep into the mountains and valleys of Fiordland they trekked, scouring those places having recently harbored the birds. During the first nine years of kakapo search, the service found none.
It wasnât until March of 1958, in a high rocky meadow beneath the peak of Mount Tutoko, that a search team of five men and two dogs honed in on the first fresh signs, feathers and chewed leaves and seed-studded droppings. A dog on the trail of what all hoped was the telltale scent of the night parrot came to a pointing halt. The bell stopped ringing. Men came running. And there, in the hollow of a large rock, clueless to the world, lay a sleeping kakapo.
Soon in hand, and understandably
A deckhand threw Bell a taut line, then fastened tight the cage of wrens. Hand over hand, Bell hauled the last six hopes for the Steadâs bush wren across the chasm and into his arms. Stepping delicately, he carried them to the edge of the scrub and opened the cage. There was nothing more that anybody could do for them now.
It was now Bellâs turn to be rescued. He scrambled to the edge of the rock, tied a rope around himself, and into the raging winter water of the Southern Ocean he jumped. The cold shock knocked him breathless. The crew hauling fast on the rope nearly drowned him en route. By the time he was pulled aboard, Bell was red as a lobster and shivering uncontrollably.
Bell would ultimately recover; the wrens heâd tried to rescue would not. Over the next few years crews would return to check up on the little refugees, with dispiriting results. Merton saw his last bush wren in 1967. A single bird was sighted again in 1972, for the final time.
And that was that. In a flash of history, even as the birdsâ would-be rescuers had looked on, New Zealand and the world had lost three species to eternity, hanging on to a fourth only by a hairbreadth and a Herculean effort. The catastrophe at Big South Cape had vindicated Bell and Merton, the messengers of doom. It had served the ivory tower skeptics a sobering lesson in island ecology, a world where rats would be kings.
For Merton the die had been castâif not with the dead albatross of Taiaroa Head, if not with the petrel slaughter on Maria Island, then certainly with the storming of Big South Capeâs matchless sanctuary. New Zealandâs embattled fauna was not to be saved by sifting through the smoldering ruins and praying for survivors. Its rescue demanded intervention against the invaders, head-on and with violence as needed. Somewhere out there more Big South Cape massacres were brewing. Somewhere out there the last of the natives were still clinging to the shreds of their homeland, with alien predators closing fast. And most conspicuous among the missing was the bird that Richard Henry had left for dead.
Chapter 5
THE NIGHT PARROT
I N THE YEARS following Henryâs heroic defeat, the kakapo had slipped into the murky netherworld of hearsay and phantom noises in the night. The latest wave of killer stoats and cats had chased the last of the kakapos to the highest, coldest, most rugged, and least inviting corners of New Zealand. Hunters and road crews pushing into Fiordlandâs final frontier would occasionally come back mentioning that theyâd heard that haunting heartbeat from the hillsides. It wasnât until 1949 that a team from the New Zealand Wildlife Service, in a Fiordland expedition searching for exotic elk, returned with a report of having actually seen, among other things, two kakapos.
The kakapo by any measure was no longer even remotely that ubiquitous voice of the New Zealand outback, whose drummings and screamings had rudely awakened the explorers in their camps, whose tragically grounded trust had once fed their expeditions with easy meat. Over the next decade, having finally come to realize that nobody on Earth could now reliably locate a single living kakapo, the Wildlife Service mounted a succession of searches. Deep into the mountains and valleys of Fiordland they trekked, scouring those places having recently harbored the birds. During the first nine years of kakapo search, the service found none.
It wasnât until March of 1958, in a high rocky meadow beneath the peak of Mount Tutoko, that a search team of five men and two dogs honed in on the first fresh signs, feathers and chewed leaves and seed-studded droppings. A dog on the trail of what all hoped was the telltale scent of the night parrot came to a pointing halt. The bell stopped ringing. Men came running. And there, in the hollow of a large rock, clueless to the world, lay a sleeping kakapo.
Soon in hand, and understandably
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