Rediscovery of the takahē, Murchison Mountains, Fiordland (1948)

Richard Owen named the genus Notornis from fossil bones. A handful of live birds turned up later. Then, on 7 August 1898, a dog named "Rough" caught a female near Lake Te Anau. The government bought her for £250. It was the last record.

"Only four takahē had been found prior to 1898 and it was now supposed to be extinct." That line stayed with Geoffrey Orbell from boyhood. By November 1948 he was 40, an Invercargill ear, eye, nose and throat specialist, a hunter and a tramper.

April 1948. Orbell was deer hunting in the Murchison Mountains, on the western shore of Lake Te Anau. While resting, he heard a call he did not recognise, "deep and long," as if someone were blowing across an empty .303 cartridge case. In the sand lay fresh bird tracks, and Orbell used his pipe to etch the footprint's size so he could measure it later. There was no time to follow. The party had to reach the boat before dark, and winter snow delayed a return until November.

Saturday 20 November 1948. Orbell came back with Rex Watson, Neil McCrostie and Joan Telfer. They boarded the Takatumu at about 3:30 am, crossed the lake, then climbed about three and a half hours up the Tunnel Burn to a snow-grass plateau. There they found grass pulled out the way swamp hens pull reeds, and droppings that suggested a large bird. "Either a pukeko or it!" Orbell said.

Within minutes, they saw one. A bird strutting about on a small patch of swampy ground. Crayfish red beak, legs and feet. Navy-blue head and breast. It made a loud gulping noise.

The party drove the birds into a semicircle of fishing net, Watson at the opening, and they walked in of their own accord. Released, they would claw, snap and scream. A third bird hung about the edge of the bush for about an hour. It was never caught.

Orbell filmed them through a telephoto lens. Watson took photographs with a box Brownie. Two takahē were tethered to sticks for pictures, then set free.

On 22 November the Otago Daily Times ran the headline "Bird believed extinct found near Te Anau." Time described Orbell as "in a state of ornithological ecstasy." "It was the worldwide interest that staggered us," Joan Watson later said. That month Forest & Bird's Arthur Harper and Robert Carter went to Internal Affairs Minister Bill Parry. A scientific reserve of more than 176,000 ha was gazetted beside Lake Te Anau.

At first the experts were not convinced, and Robert Falla, director of the Dominion Museum, judged Orbell's April measurements too big for a takahē and put them down to a white heron. The November capture proved the original hunch right. About two months later an 11-person Dominion Museum party camped at the lake for a week to record birds and eggs. Falla's paper, "Notornis Rediscovered", appeared in Emu in May 1949. A living population was confirmed.

The Lake of the Friendless is now Lake Orbell, in Takahē Valley. Orbell was made MBE "for scientific work" in 1953. The Department of Conservation calls 20 November 1948 the beginning of takahē recovery. There were 118 birds in 1982 and about 500 by 2023. In 1998, aged 90, Orbell met the original team at the lake again. Rex Watson kept it simple. "Were we impressed with the birds? Oh yes."