Tui Grove (Oakura)

Tūī Grove was formed in 2006 off Wairau Road in Ōākura. The name was suggested by the developer because of the many birds living in the bush around the new street. There was already a Tūī Place in Bell Block and a Tūī Street in Ōhura, that little township going so far as to to name all its streets after native birds before the First World War.

Tūī (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) were nicknamed parson birds by European settlers, on account of their white throat feathers. The birds were admired for their melodious song but also cooked in pies and their iridescent feathers used for decoration. Māori loved tūī as well – William Walter Smith, head gardener at Pukekura Park and an expert on New Zealand birds, described in 1909 how Māori chiefs would capture and train them to sing specific tunes and even mimic human speech.

One of the earliest mentions of tūī in a local newspaper occurred in the Taranaki Herald in 1868. At a recent meeting of the Taranaki Agricultural Society, a Mr Joll spoke of the need to protect native birds like the tūī, numbers of which he believed were steadily diminishing. On his property “there were not a quarter so many as there were a few years since”, a situation he blamed in part on wild cats. In recommending an Act be passed to save the species, Joll was ahead of his time – it would take another five years for the government to give tūī legal protection, the first native bird to be fully safeguarded in this way. The measure clearly worked because there are now more than two million of the beloved songbirds, with Christchurch our only major city without a breeding population.

Tūī featured on New Zealand’s one penny coin from 1940 to 1964 and have been used to advertise everything from beer to campervans.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.