A bird so striking that people wanted to own it. That turned out to be a problem. The huia wore its beauty like a warning, glossy black feathers tipped with iridescent green, a beak so sexually dimorphic that males and females looked like different species. Males used a short, straight chisel for splitting rotten wood. Females wielded a long, curved sickle for probing deep crevices. They fed together, two beaks solving one problem. This partnership impressed early naturalists. It did not impress the collectors who shot every pair they found. The huia lived in the old forests of the North Island, where trees grew thick and decay took centuries. It ate huhu grubs and wētā, moving through the canopy in small family groups. Its call carried through the mist, a gentle descending whistle that sounded like a question waiting for an answer. Then the feathers became fashionable. Wealthy households in London and New York wore huia tails in their hats. A single skin sold for more than a month's wage. Museums competed for specimens. Collectors swarmed the remaining forests and shot everything they saw. The last official sighting came from the Tararua Ranges in 1907. A few unconfirmed reports followed, then nothing. What remains are mounted skins in glass cases, their plumage still glossy, their eyes still bright, their beaks still mismatched. A partnership that evolution spent millions of years perfecting, undone in less than a human lifetime.