Eyles' Harrier

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Eyles's Harrier
Conservation status
Fossil
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Falconiformes Family: Accipitridae Genus: Circus Species: C. eylesi
Binomial name
Circus eylesi Scarlett, 1953

The Eyles' Harrier is an extinct bird of prey which lived in New Zealand.

It was an example of island gigantism, weighing over twice as much as a Swamp Harrier.^[1] It was a generalist predator, taking prey of the same size as small eagle species do.

A noted explorer, Charles Douglas, claims in his journals that he had an encounter with two raptors of immense size in Landsborough River valley (probably in the 1870s), and shot and ate them.^[2] These birds might have been a last remnant of the the mighty pouakai (Haast's Eagle), but this is very unlikely: there had not been sufficient numbers of suitable prey for a population of Haast's Eagle to maintain itself for about half a millennium at that time; furthermore 19th century Māori lore was quite adamant that the pouakai was a bird not seen in living memory. Still, Douglas' observations on wildlife are generally trustworthy; a more probable explanation, given that the alleged three-metre wingspan of Douglas' birds is unlikely to have been more than a rough estimate, is that the birds were Eyles' Harriers - modern estimates tend to assume that a 3-metre wingspan is decidedly large even for Haast's Eagle; that of Eyles' Harrier was probably somewhat short of 2 metres. Although the Eyles' Harrier is also assumed to have gone extinct in prehistoric times, its dietary habits alone make it a more likely candidate for late survival.

This species was named for Jim Eyles, paleontologist and former director of the Nelson Museum and the West Coast Museum.

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