Iconic New Zealand Birds
Millions of years before man set foot on the islands of New Zealand, a magnificent array of birds ruled the land.
For 80 million years, the only mammals that roamed the country were bats, so without predators, birds evolved into giant powerful creatures, some that only walked the land, that could be found nowhere else on earth.
The moa, a flightless, docile beast, was as heavy as a cow and stood taller than any man - one species grew to three metres, the tallest bird to ever live. Its enemy was the Haast’s eagle, the largest of its kind to fly with its wingspan as wide as a moa was tall, that would attack with its vicious beak and talons.
A giant penguin, that would have looked men in the eye, waddled along the coastline.
But the arrival of man and with him, animals, in the last 1000 years led to the extinction of one third of the indigenous birds that walked and flew in New Zealand. The most recent victims were the laughing owl and the huia, with its glossy black feathers and bright orange wattle.
While New Zealand’s sky and forest floor still abound with extraordinary birds and the trill of the dawn chorus, the race is now on to protect those species that still exist. Birds like the treasured kakapo, a parrot that hops like a sparrow and growls like a dog, now number just 86 in the world.
There are success stories like the takahe, a colourful flightless bird with its blue-green cloak and vivid red beak, which was thought extinct for more than 50 years, before being rediscovered in the tussock grasslands of Fiordland. The takahe remains on the endangered species list.
Today, a quarter of New Zealand’s birds are found nowhere else on the planet. The tui is a melodious bird with a metallic sheen and a tuft of white feathers under its chin, which sups on the nectar of native flowers. The mischievous kea, a mountain parrot, roams the South Island high country and loves to snoop in campers’ backpacks or grapple with the wipers on car windows.
The true icon of New Zealand birds, and the most unusual, is the kiwi - a flightless wonder with hair-like feathers, long whiskers and nostrils at the end of its bill to sniff out food. New Zealanders carry the nickname 'Kiwi' and the bird graces our coins and lends its name to our currency.
Because New Zealand’s native birds are so rare, it is the responsibility of 'Kiwis' to keep these species alive - they cannot be conserved in nature anywhere else in the world.
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