n 1889 Richard Henry, a naturalist and a conservationist well before his time, came to Te Anau tempted by a government offer of a £50 reward for an easy route to the West Coast. Travelling from the north-west arm of Middle Fiord, he reached George Sound via what became known as the Henry Saddle.

The takahe

Fascinated by the wildlife of the area, Henry stayed on to become Te Anau’s first European settler. He built a small hut on the shore and acquired a five-metre boat which he christened the Putangi after the paradise duck. With this he explored the lakeshore and surrounding forests, becoming an authority on Te Anau’s birdlife.

When Henry arrived, birds abounded. Across the lake from his hut kakapo, piopio, tieke, kokako, little spotted and brown kiwi flourished. But as early as his first year, Henry saw the signs of things to come. Cats and rats were beginning to infest the country and the first mustelids - stoats, weasels and ferrets - were seen, infiltrating at an alarming rate from the east, where the government had introduced them in a largely futile attempt to control rabbits.

In 1883 Henry wrote: 'Someone has put ferrets across the Waiau, under Mt Luxmore. I was trapping rabbits there and caught two ferrets, so I think the end of the kakapo has already begun.' A few years after this in the nearby Hollyford Valley, the surveyor E. H. Wilmot noted that the kiwi, kakapo and weka had almost disappeared because of predation by mustelids.

It is all rather ironic that the takahe, the bird that was to be the object of much of Henry's efforts and attentions throughout his time in Fiordland, remained hidden away just over the ridge pottering around among the tussock in a hidden valley.

The discovery of the first takahe at Duck Cove, Resolution Island, in 1849 was reported by Dr Gideon Mantell at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London:

This bird was taken by some sealers who were pursuing their avocations in Dusky Bay. Perceiving the trail of a large and unknown bird on the snow with which the ground was then covered, they followed the footprints until they obtained a sight of the Notomis, which their dogs instantly pursued, and after a long chase caught alive in a gully of a sound behind Resolution Island It ran with great speed, and upon being captured uttered loud screams, and fought and struggled violently; it was kept alive three or four days on the schooner and then killed and the body roasted and eaten by the crew, each partaking of the dainty which was declared to be delicious. The beak and legs were of a bright red colour. My son secured the skin.

The second takahe was caught in 1851 on Secretary Island opposite Deas Cove in Thompson Sound, the third and fourth around Te Anau, near the Mararoa River in 1879 and in the Middle Fiord in 1898 respectively, the latter bird being purchased from its finder, Donald Ross, for the princely sum of £250 and preserved in the Otago Museum.

It was 50 or so years later, in 1948, that Dr G. Orbell, while on a hunting expedition, discovered a small number of takahe in a remote valley on the western shores of Lake Te Anau. Since then the Wildlife Service, now the Department of Conservation, has invested a great deal of effort in an attempt to breed takahe in captivity, first at Mt Bruce in the Wairarapa, and more recently at Burwood, near Te Anau, without much success initially. It is only recently that the idiosyncrasies of the takahe and its sex life have been understood and captive breeding is well underway - so successfully, in fact, that a number of chicks have been released back into the Southern Alps as well as on Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds, and other islands further north.

To my mind, the takahe, the most beautiful of our native birds, deserves all the help it can get. Gerald Durrell describes his first meeting with a takahe in Takahe Valley: