Tūī/kōkō

Tūī, also known as kōkō, are famous songbirds. To say of someone ‘me he korokoro tūī’ (a throat like a tūī) is to compliment their good singing.

Tūī also have amazing powers of mimicry, readily imitating the songs of other birds or any other sounds they hear. Young male tūī were kept as mōkai or pet birds by Māori, fed on berries and roast kūmara and taught to speak. Some tūī learned to recite 40 words or more.

Talking tūī were highly valued by their owners and listened to with keen interest by the kin group since they were believed to have oracular powers. There are stories of gifted tūī that could recite incantations and whakapapa, and one tradition tells of a war caused by the theft of a learned tūī.

A term of endearment for a pōtiki (youngest child of a family) might be ‘he kōkō iti’ – a little tūī. These Māori traditions persisted into the 20th century.