In December last year I was contacted by Department of
Conservation staff on Stephens Island reporting that they had
found a bone that looked like a parrot’s beak in their vegetable
garden, and asking if I could help identify it. Stephens Island
Nature Reserve lies off the northern tip of D’Urville Island in
the western approaches to Cook Strait, and has a fascinating
conservation history. It was an island ark holding many now-
extinct species including Lyall’s wren, South Island piopio and
South Island kokako until a lighthouse settlement was
established in the early 1890s. Most of the forest was cleared
and cats introduced resulting in the local extinction of about
14 bird species (and global extinction of Lyall’s wren),
including South Island saddleback, kaka and yellow-crowned
parakeet in addition to piopio and kokako. The island was then
inhabited by lighthouse keepers and their families for the best
part of a century, and so it was quite possible that one of
those salty sea-dogs had buried an exotic pet