The Laughing Owl

Most of us are used to the cry of the ruru or morepork, but once there was a disturbing cackle or laugh.
It came from the now believed extinct laughing owl called hakoke or korohengi in the North Island rather than whekau, as it was in the South.
Twice the size of the morepork, it also hunted on the ground. This likely helped lead to its extinction.
Once the kiore - or Pacific rat arrived - it began to eat the owl’s food source only to turn into prey itself
But the owl could not adapt to cats, stoats and ferrets.
One of the mounted birds at Te Papa Museum is a laughing owl, the last known bird was found dead on a road in Timaru in 1914, having been hit by a car.
Since then the sound of its maniacal laughter has been heard as late as the 1980s but no bird has been reliably seen.
The first owl to be preserved was collected at Waikouaiti on the North Otago coast in 1843 by Percy Earl, a well known specimen collector who sent it to the British Museum.
But most of what we know comes from Thomas Henry Potts, considered one of New Zealand’s earliest conservationists.
Born in London on November 23, 1824, the son of Thomas Potts and his wife Mary Ann Freeman, he inherited the family gun making business which was later bought out.
He came to New Zealand with his wife Emma in 1854 with three children and once here had another 10.
They settled in Hororata and Thomas began exploring and claimedland for a farm.
Thomas was a member of the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society and the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, and a president of the horticultural society as well as an original trustee of the Canterbury Museum.
He often championed the natural environment, protesting the destruction of totara in 1868.
His biggest passion was natural history, motivated by the search for ferns and birds, which he wanted protected.
He saw both living and dead laughing owls, but considered their cry to be unearthly rather than like laughter.
Thomas later proposed that Resolution Island become a reserve, which happened in 1892.
He did not live to see it though. Thomas died in Christchurch on
July 27, 1888 and is buried in Linwood Cemetery.​