Alice McKenzie(II)
"Among reported direct observations by Europeans, one of the most arresting is that given in her later years by a Mrs Alice McKenzie who was born and spent her childhood at Martins Bay. Throughout her life she retained a vivid recollection of an incident when, as a child of seven, about the year 1880, she had been waiting for her brother who was mustering cattle. As she sat on a coastal sand dune adjacent to forest, she was surprised to see a large bird of dark bluish plumage standing close to her. It was about 3.5 feet in height, and her clearest recollection was of its large protruding eyes, broad beak, and powerful scaly legs which she remembered as being about the same thickness as her own forearm and wrist. After she had published this description in a book of reminiscences, Mrs McKenzie was cross-questioned by many people and interviewed for radio broadcast. She continued to give convincing and good descriptive answers."
A few years later, I read Dr Bernard Heuvelmans's classic book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), which contained an entire chapter on the subject of putative surviving moas, but I was surprised and disappointed that this did not mention McKenzie's famous sighting. Notwithstanding that strange omission, my own interest in her account has always remained keen, and finally, in my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), I documented it myself, by which time various intriguing new developments had taken place.
"One of the most thought-provoking reports casting doubt upon such claims, however, is contained within the 1952, revised edition of Alice McKenzie's book Pioneers of Martins Bay (first published 1947, but lacking this report). In it, she recalled her encounter in 1880 as a 7-year-old child at Martins Bay, South Island, with a strange bird that cannot be conclusively identified with any known species alive today. Able to walk straight up to it, she described it as a large bird at least 3 ft high, with navy-blue plumage, dark green legs with large scales, no noticeable tail, and three large claws on each foot. She endeavored to capture it, and in response it attempted to attack her, so she ran home. When she returned to the spot with her father, the bird was gone, but its three-toed tracks remained. Using a measuring ruler, her father found that the middle toe measured 11 in from heel to tip, though the soft sand may have enlarged it a little.
"In 1889, she saw the bird again, and her brother spotted it once too. After the rediscovery in December 1948 of another supposedly extinct South Island bird, the famous flightless rail known as the takahe Porphyrio (=Notornis) mantelli, Alice McKenzie examined a preserved specimen, because its dark blue plumage suggested the possibility that the mystery bird she and her brother had seen had been a takahe. Indeed, in 1946 (two years before the takahe's rediscovery), she had written to an Otago University professor actually claiming to have seen a takahe. After examining one, however, she then discounted this possibility, stating that the takahe seemed totally different in appearance from the mystery bird that she had seen in 1880 and 1889, noting in particular that the takahe's legs were deep red, not green like her bird's. Could Alice McKenzie's mystery bird have been a living Megalapteryx? Some ornithologists are optimistic that it was, but others consider it to have been a takahe after all, or even, as proposed in 1987 by New Zealand author John Hall-Jones, a blue-plumaged white-faced heron.
"Alice McKenzie died in 1963, but now, 44 years later [i.e. in 2007], her granddaughter, Alice Margaret Leaker, who is convinced of the veracity of her maternal grandmother's testimony, has compiled a new edition of her book, in which she delves deeper into this longstanding controversy. Quite apart from the late date of the sighting, however, another problem when attempting to reconcile McKenzie's bird with a moa is that none of the numerous moa remains so far recovered have included any blue-colored feathers.
A few years later, I read Dr Bernard Heuvelmans's classic book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), which contained an entire chapter on the subject of putative surviving moas, but I was surprised and disappointed that this did not mention McKenzie's famous sighting. Notwithstanding that strange omission, my own interest in her account has always remained keen, and finally, in my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), I documented it myself, by which time various intriguing new developments had taken place.
"One of the most thought-provoking reports casting doubt upon such claims, however, is contained within the 1952, revised edition of Alice McKenzie's book Pioneers of Martins Bay (first published 1947, but lacking this report). In it, she recalled her encounter in 1880 as a 7-year-old child at Martins Bay, South Island, with a strange bird that cannot be conclusively identified with any known species alive today. Able to walk straight up to it, she described it as a large bird at least 3 ft high, with navy-blue plumage, dark green legs with large scales, no noticeable tail, and three large claws on each foot. She endeavored to capture it, and in response it attempted to attack her, so she ran home. When she returned to the spot with her father, the bird was gone, but its three-toed tracks remained. Using a measuring ruler, her father found that the middle toe measured 11 in from heel to tip, though the soft sand may have enlarged it a little.
"In 1889, she saw the bird again, and her brother spotted it once too. After the rediscovery in December 1948 of another supposedly extinct South Island bird, the famous flightless rail known as the takahe Porphyrio (=Notornis) mantelli, Alice McKenzie examined a preserved specimen, because its dark blue plumage suggested the possibility that the mystery bird she and her brother had seen had been a takahe. Indeed, in 1946 (two years before the takahe's rediscovery), she had written to an Otago University professor actually claiming to have seen a takahe. After examining one, however, she then discounted this possibility, stating that the takahe seemed totally different in appearance from the mystery bird that she had seen in 1880 and 1889, noting in particular that the takahe's legs were deep red, not green like her bird's. Could Alice McKenzie's mystery bird have been a living Megalapteryx? Some ornithologists are optimistic that it was, but others consider it to have been a takahe after all, or even, as proposed in 1987 by New Zealand author John Hall-Jones, a blue-plumaged white-faced heron.
"Alice McKenzie died in 1963, but now, 44 years later [i.e. in 2007], her granddaughter, Alice Margaret Leaker, who is convinced of the veracity of her maternal grandmother's testimony, has compiled a new edition of her book, in which she delves deeper into this longstanding controversy. Quite apart from the late date of the sighting, however, another problem when attempting to reconcile McKenzie's bird with a moa is that none of the numerous moa remains so far recovered have included any blue-colored feathers.