Haast's eagle

plural Haast's eagles

1. An extinct giant eagle of New Zealand, †Hieraaetus moorei, which preyed on moas.

   Haast's eagle lived on the island undisturbed until people arrived and started eating all the moas they could find.

   2012, Matt Kaplan, The Science of Monsters, Simon & Schuster (Scribner), page 26

   2 more examples

   The moas were bigger than modern ostriches, so the fact that Haast's eagle was able to kill them (hitting them from the side and taking them down that way) is even more impressive.

   2015, Janine Rogers, Eagle, Reaktion Books, page 21

   To work out how the Haast’s eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) — which lived in New Zealand and weighed up to 15 kilograms — fed, Anneke van Heteren at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Germany and her colleagues created digital 3D models of specimens.

   2021 December 11, Christa Lesté-Lasserre, “The bird that was eagle and vulture”, in New Scientist, number 3364, page 23