Huia

"Prized by the Maori for its tail feathers, sought after by European skin collectors on account of an anomalous contrast in shape between bill of male and female, the huia... was doomed, perhaps from the hour Captain Cook first dropped anchor in New Zealand waters. . . .The beak of the male - thick, fairly straight and of medium length - contrasts with the much longer, delicately formed and gracefully curved bill of the female. . . .[I]n 1907, a few days after Christmas, W.W. Smith saw three birds, two males and a female, during an observation that has come to be regarded as the final indubitable record of the species."