What Would a Moa Eat
19 November 2022
• Arthur’s Pass
by robin
A Moa would have towered over me. It would have had to bend it long neck to peck at me. Huge skeletons, of the big footed flightless birds, line the corridors of museums we have visited. Now extinct, the 6 species ranged in size from a thanksgiving turkey to giant beasts with drumsticks the size of a cow. Until we walked through the woods East of Arthurs Pass in the Southern Alps it never crossed my mind what a Moa might eat. The walk through the Moa Forest was both strangely familiar and total alien at the same time.
The familiar were either recent arrivals, now considered invasive or very ancient plants that reach across the movement of the plates. The ancient plants were the most surprising when we rounded the corner on the trail and the forest floor covered with ground pine could have been in the Adirondacks. With a fancy name of Lycopodia, these delicate green plants are so ancient (400my says Johnathon our host) that both the modern Pacific and Atlantic were not born. In the last 400 my the continents got together for a large party and the plants were shared widely. These ancient plants make me feel at home in the woods far from the Adirondacks.
The familiar recent arrivals are causing trouble in New Zealand. The lupine that we're so carefully plant at the our Adirondack cabin, thrives in thin soil growing along the roads and in the gravel beds of the broad gravels banks and islands of braided rivers. The rivers with great names like Waimakariri and Rakaia are nesting sites for many of the terns and oystercatchers than circle the Mabel Rose. These sea birds safely raise their young in the middle of the river where there is no where for a predators . Growing in the middle of the river the lupine provide cover possums, rats and cats making the young easy prey. Not native, not good for New Zealand.
The rose gardens in Christchurch, the lambs ear on the edge of the stream and the Douglas fir poking out of the Manuka are familiar but not native to this island. The moas would have seen the tiny orchids on the edge of the path, the Manuka tree covered with time white flowers and the huge north fagus or beech tree filling the forests here. The moas might have munched on these trees but there are entire fields of bushes designed to make a Moa walk away in disgust. One bush sticker it long bendy bare purple branches far out into the trail but hides the blossoms and the leaves buried deep in squiggly branches. The branches are designed to stab a Moa in her eye before she finds the delicate yellow flowers. Another plant appears to have no leaves or flowers. If you look closely at the underside of the branches there are isolated leaves smaller than the clipping of a finger nail, one or two non each branch. A single flower dangles down from the branch smaller than a grain of rice. Hidden from hungry Moa and other birds, these bushed depends on lizards for pollination.
Michael our host here is an ecologist who grew up on this land space. As he looks over the valley fenced off from livestock for over 20 years he dreams of more and more food for moas as the Manuka and beech thrive. He leans towards preserving the remaining species rather than using high tech science to bring back hungry Moa to his farm.
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