Hakawai

Hakawai, also pronounced and spelt Hokioi in the North Island, with various similar, slightly variant spellings, was the name given by New Zealand Māori people to a mythological bird that was sometimes heard but not usually seen. It is now associated with the nocturnal aerial displays made by Coenocorypha snipe.

In Māori mythology the Hakawai was one of eleven tapu, or sacred, birds of Raka Maomao, the god of the winds. The Hakawai lived in the heavens and only descended to the earth at night. It was considered to be a gigantic bird of prey and was described (as the Hokioi) by a Ngāti Apa chief, to the Governor of New Zealand Sir George Grey, as:

”Its colour was red and black and white. It was a bird of (black) feathers, tinged with yellow and green; it had a bunch of red feathers on the top of its head. It was a large bird, as large as the moa.”

Hearing the Hakawai was considered to be a bad omen, traditionally presaging war. Ornithologists in New Zealand have wondered whether the myth related to a real bird, whether extinct or still living, with some ascribing it to a folk memory of the extinct Haast's eagle (Harpagornis moorei).

Although mention of the Hakawai occurred in Māori mythology throughout New Zealand, since European settlement of the main islands direct experience of the Hakawai – through hearing the sounds it made – was largely restricted to the Muttonbird Islands, several small islands in the vicinity of Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island, in the far south of New Zealand. The Muttonbird Islands have no permanent human residents but are visited seasonally, from mid March to the end of May, for muttonbirding – the harvesting of sooty shearwater chicks for food and oil. There the sound ascribed to the Hakawai was described as having two main components, the first part being vocal, a call rendered as “hakwai, hakwai, hakwai”, followed by a non-vocal roar as of an object travelling through the air at high speed. It was heard on calm, moonlit nights and appeared to come from a great height.

...
Wikipedia