Rare Birds!

The weather turned really crappy again so we spent today in 'Te Papa', the museum of New Zealand. This is a brand new museum and contains some excellent stuff about the wildlife and environment and some really cheesy theme rides.

They had some seriously large birds here a few hundred years ago. First there is the moa which was like a giant emu and stood up to four metres high! Unfortunately the maori ate them all before europeans even got here. Scarier sill was the Haast eagle which used to eat the moa. They had talons as big as a tigers paw! There is an excellent life size model of a giant eagle attacking a moa in the museum.