Recently I've done a bit of work researching the bird after which Piopio is named. I'd always been told that the Piopio was an extinct native thrush, but had no idea what it looked like and why it became extinct. Below is a picture of a print taken from Walter Lawry Buller's "Birds of New Zealand, 2nd edition, 1888." One thousand sets of the edition were produced, although 251 copies were lost in the wrecks of the Matai and Assaye sinkings in 1890. The image below is a photograph of a chromolithograph by artist J.G. Keulemans of the North and South Island Thrushes (Turnagra tanagra and Turnagra crassirostris) that we own, purchased from a company in Greytown called New Zealand Birds, http://www.nzbirds.com . (The South Island bird is in the front, North Island in the back):
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It was a passerine bird of the Turnagridae family, common in 1873 but declining rapidly thereafter due to predation by cats and rats, with the last specimen seen in 1900 or thereabouts. The bird was commonly named a thrush, but is now thought to be more closely related to the bower birds and birds of paradise from Australia and New Guinea.
Still can't find out how/why the village was named after the bird, my detective work continues....
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