New Zealand extinctions

The English language, or at least the adherents thereof with more time on their hands than sense, has bestowed us…

I’ve decided to get into the bird tour business. I mean, how hard could it be? Get up early, point…

New Zealand has a very odd biota these days. There are the endemics, which are odd in their own way,…

It’s been months since I was in Borneo but for any number of reasons I’m still writing about it. This…

While New Zealand is famous for its endemic oddities, once upon a time New Zealand also had many birds from…

New Zealand has one of the direst records of extinction is modern times, second on really to Hawaii in terms of bird…

Last Sunday marked the end of an era in New Zealand with the sad passing of the conservationist and ornithologist…

Six posts over seven weeks may seem a lot to devote to the wrecking of New Zealand’s bird fauna. Perhaps it is, although entire books can and have been written on the subject. But I felt it was important to cover this, and early on in my position as the New Zealand beat writer, because extinction is so much a part of birds and birding here.

The third stage of the extinction events I’ve been cataloguing here began with the settlement of New Zealand by Europeans, mainly Brits, after the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Here, however, the story becomes complicated.

No moa, no moa In old Ao-tea-roa Can’t get ’em They’ve et ’em They’re gone and there ain’t no moa’…