Talking tui Woof Woof - who entertained international crowds for more than a decade - has barked his last words.
Last week Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre founders Robert and Robyn Webb laid their 16-year friendship with Woof Woof, the talking tui, to rest when they buried him in their backyard
- next to his "mate" Spotty the Kiwi. A routine day at work was interrupted when the couple discovered Woof Woof lying in his cage. "When we came up into the aviary we found him just lying there on the little flower bush almost like he was waiting there for us to get here," Mr Webb said.
"Robyn was just stroking him and talking to him and then he closed his eyes and was gone."
Despite Woof Woof's departure - at the "ripe old age" of 16 - his memory is preserved via Youtube stardom. "It's quite sad because he was quite well known. He'd been on TV and there is a Youtube video where he sings the Pizza Hut ad music and other ones of him talking," Mr Webb said.
"And it's all because nobody has ever had a tui like him because nobody else has a talking one."
One video of the talkative tui, in which he speaks in the deep voice of his keeper, Mr Webb, and says his favourite phrases, "Come here quick", "Do you want a swim?" and "How's your cold?" accompanied with a resounding sneeze, has had more than 30,000 hits.
It wasn't until the chatty tui was nearly two that he began to speak. One day when Mr Webb was sweeping out the aviary he had heard a deep voice say, "Hello woof woof."
"It utterly confused me. I couldn't work out where the voice had come from but once I did, I realised he'd named himself," Mr Webb said.
The Webbs had cared for Woof Woof since finding him at five days old, trapped in the crevice of a tree after a storm.
"The other two tui, who spent time with Woof Woof, have learnt from him," Mr Webb said.
"They're already starting to talk and still trying to talk to him like he's there."
