The Huia was the most highly prized bird of the Maori and its distinctive tail feathers with the white band across the tips could only be worn by chiefs. It has deep metallic, bluish-black plumage with a greenish sheen, but its most remarkable feature was the difference in size between the male and female’s bill, and huge numbers were killed to be stuffed and put on display. When the Duke of York was presented with a tail feather on his visit to New Zealand in 1902, the demand for it grew so much that it became extinct in the early 1900s.