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Story: Pacific migrations

Long-tailed cuckoo with grey warbler

Long-tailed cuckoo with grey warbler

The long-tailed cuckoo (its young being fed here by a grey warbler) winters over in the Pacific Islands and flies south in spring. Polynesians would have noted the seasonal arrival and departure of the bird and realised it was heading towards land somewhere. This may have fuelled speculation about undiscovered islands in the vast Pacific Ocean.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: PUBL-0012-14

by John Gerrard Keulemans

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Geoff Irwin, Pacific migrations – East to the empty Pacific, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/1792/long-tailed-cuckoo-with-grey-warbler (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Geoff Irwin, published 4 March 2009, updated 8 February 2017.

Comments

Gerald Hanner
04 September 2022
I suspect that when the Polynesians saw the Pacific Golden Plovers wing off northward to get to their Alaskan breeding grounds they might have deduced that land lay in that direction. They would be correct in that deduction, but they would be in for a surprise, climate-wise. I have wondered if it is a coincidence that a lot of the costal Indian tribes in Canada and Alaska look a lot like Polynesians. And a lot of their totems seems to have a strong Polynesian appearance.