Tui Bevin was not about for her best day, which makes it no less significant.
The best day of my life happened six years before I was born.
I've considered other contenders for my best day, such as the day I had emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy to stop me bleeding to death, or the day I finally stepped inside the restored ''lost'' Amber Room of the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg, but I always come back to the day the takahe were rediscovered.
Their discovery set in motion a chain of events across the world that resulted in me being born.
The takahe had been thought extinct for 50 years, but after research and trips looking for them, Geoffrey Orbell and his companions finally found two takahe in Fiordland's Murchison Mountains and photographed them for the world to see on November 20, 1948.
The takahe's rediscovery created a worldwide sensation (at least in ornithological circles).
My father read about it in Denmark in 1950. In fact that was how he first heard about New Zealand.
Decades later, he wrote how Robert Falla's article on the rediscovery of the takahe in Emu in 1949 made New Zealand look like a country of exciting possibility to a young ornithologist and wildlife enthusiast.
He corresponded with one of those mentioned in the article and was offered a job here in the Wildlife branch of the Department of Internal Affairs.
My parents and siblings immigrated to New Zealand in 1952 and in February 1953 my father went on his first field trip to study the takahe.
I suspect New Zealand lived up to his dreams as he once began a paper about the takahe with: ''The re-discovery of the Takahe was an ornithological fairy tale ...''
Unfortunately, the takahe tale hasn't had a happy-ever-after ending as they remain critically endangered.
However, their discovery did have a fairy-tale ending for me. My mother told me many times that two children were not considered a family in 1950s New Zealand.
At that time the average Pakeha woman had almost four babies and the average Maori woman had almost seven.
So my parents decided to have a third: me.
I was the New Zealand addition to the family and so was given a New Zealand name, and not surprisingly, a bird's name.
My mother would always go on to say they were so glad they decided to have number three.
Me too. Me too.
The day takahe were rediscovered on November 20, 1948 was definitely the best day of my life.
• Tui Bevin is a Dunedin School of Medicine research fellow.
