Lord Howe Island

An unusual taxidermy in a Northland antique shop has ruffled feathers in the international rare bird community. Alex Casey investigates.

Most recently, in 2019, a rat eradication plan was entirely based on the success of similar programmes in New Zealand. “We even had New Zealand people come over to supervise the bait drops and everything.” And 1,000km across the Tasman Sea, Hutton continues to hold out hope for the “extremely rare” piece that will one day complete his museum’s white gallinule display. She also hopes the curious find might encourage people to take a closer look in their own backyards: “Look outside in a tree, lift your head from the work desk, go for more walks – there’s more magical, mystical things happening than you might think.” The feet pose a problem too: “they look a bit big for me, the gallinule had slightly smaller feet and stockier legs.” Instead of being a once-in-a-lifetime find, he proposes it might be something less exciting, but still very rare: an albino or leucistic pūkeko. In 2011, four unusually coloured pūkeko were found on an Otago farm – two completely white and two boasting a “Dalmation-like” plumage. “It just doesn’t look like it would be 200 years old, unless it was perfectly taxidermied and kept in a glass case in an air-conditioned room for 200 years,” he laughs. “When I saw the photos I thought ‘wow, that would be nice if that was a gallinule’,” he muses over the patchy Zoom call from his office. Hutton, the curator of Lord Howe Island museum, also admits he was “very excited” when he first saw the photos. So when an unusual taxidermy bird that looked a lot like a white gallinule was spotted in an antique shop in the Northland town of Waipū in March 2022, it certainly ruffled a few feathers. “Social media has been a great way of pulling it together, whether it is photos or just accounts of what people have seen in their garden.” “We have such a small genetic pool of DNA that New Zealand probably actually has a higher percentage of leucistic birds,” she explains. In just 30 years the previously undisturbed island will have become a pitstop for passing sailors, and the white gallinule will become extinct.