Poukai


In Māori mythology, the pouakai or poukai is a monstrous bird. In some of these legends, pouakai kill and eat humans. The myth may refer to the real but now extinct Haast's eagle: the largest known eagle species, which was able to kill adult moa weighing up to, and which had the capability to kill a human.
Haast's eagles, which only lived in the east and northwest of New Zealand's South Island, did not become extinct until around two hundred years after the arrival of Māori. Eagles are depicted in early rock-shelter paintings in South Canterbury. Large amounts of the eagle's lowland habitat had been destroyed by burning by A.D. 1350, and it was driven extinct by overhunting, both directly and indirectly: its main prey species, nine species of moa and other large birds such as adzebills, flightless ducks, and flightless geese, were hunted to extinction at the same time.