The only flightless songbird in the world. The mouse-like Stephen’s Island Wren, concluded its millions of years of existence with swift extinction over little more than a twenty year span. It’s final lifeboat after it’s mainland decline was Takapourewa (Stephen’s Island). Lying in the north western approach to Cook Strait, it was seen by the British as a perfect place for a lighthouse. From that point, the future of the island’s birds was doomed. Within twenty years, the cats that had come on shore with the sailors and lighthouse keepers, had obliterated this tiny songbird. It would never be heard or seen again; Stephen’s Island had been its last sanctuary.

February 1895, when the lighthouse keeper’s cat brought a little bird home, was to be the last known sighting of the Stephen’s Island Wren.

 

This artwork is a montage of the island, the wren and the influences that assured its demise. To remember and to know the story of our extinct birds is so important. We cannot bring back their song but we can, and should know their story.

 

Excerpts from diaries and letters of the few people who came into contact with the Stephen’s Island Wren…

 

Buller wrote:  “… a bird...entirely distinct from anything hitherto known”

 

Travers - a trader in bird specimens, in a letter to Rothschild 7th March 1895, (Rothschild Papers, Natural History Museum, London) wrote: “I was told that the most likely time to find it was the winter, as it was during that time the cat brought most of the specimens to the house. Living specimens have been only twice seen and on each occasion the person who saw it had no gun...it was running around the rocks like a mouse and was so quick in its movements that he could not get near enough to hit it with a stick or a stone.”

 

Lyall (one of the lighthouse keepers) wrote in 1895: “The cats have become wild and are making sad havoc among the birds.”

 

Travers to Hartert 28th November 1895: “My friend Mr Lyall informs me (a few days ago) that he has not seen another specimen and believes it to be quite extinct...I however have the two specimens in spirits that I have mentioned to you”.