10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Not that I don’t enjoy seeing new species myself, it’s just that they are an easy target and I am nothing if not lazy and mean spirited. But there is one kind of tick that I genuinely do enjoy, and as I do more and more birding it becomes harder and harder to get; new families.

Family 163

Family Wombats Uganda Fiji 163

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 8, 2012

As 10,000 Birds’ New Zealand beat writer, I sometimes should write about New Zealand birds, but today I thought I’d talk about a bird that people thought was one but almost certainly wasn’t. It is one of the many species that went extinct in New Zealand, only for once it didn’t.

New Zealand 179

New Zealand Pelicans Solomon Islands Palau 179

10,000 Birds

MARCH 30, 2011

In that particular spirit I hope to set the record straight on two separate issues that revolve around a genus of parakeets found mostly, but not exclusively, in New Zealand. In addition to this tight clustering of related parakeets, the genus also had two species in the far-flung Society Islands (now in French Polynesia).

New Zealand 146

New Zealand Fiji Parrots Tonga 146

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 14, 2015

The species was in the news because some scientists had finally managed (or bothered – it’s much the same thing) to locate the population high in the mountains of the Solomon Islands, and catch and photograph one. Unsurprisingly the ones that most stick in the mind were the lost species. New Zealand Bitterns.

Collecting 219

Collecting Solomon Islands New Zealand Fiji 219

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

One of the less well remembered awful things that happened in the Second World War (a six year period of history filled with an uncountable number of awful things) is that war’s direct role in the extinction of two species of rail. The loss of these two species was, in fact, no aberration, except in how late the extinctions were.

Hawaii 202

Hawaii Mammals Guam Fiji 202

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2013

It is, instead, a member of the Petroicidae, the Australasian robins, a family mostly found in New Guinea and Australia but also reaching here in New Zealand and as far across the Pacific as Fiji. Until I started researching this post I didn’t know an interesting fact about the range of this species.

Guinea 154

Guinea Fiji Australia New Zealand 154

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

Enter the Silktail , an odd little bird found only on two islands, Taveuni and Vanua Levu, in Fiji. The Silktail, ( Lamprolia victoriae ) by Tom Tarrant (CC) A 2008 paper on the phylogeny of the species and several others came to a surprising conclusion, that the species was actually related to the fantails.

Horses 165

Horses France North America Fiji 165

10,000 Birds

JUNE 15, 2011

A combination of extinctions and proximity to Fiji means that a trip to that island group would net you pretty much all the same birds plus a whole raft of others. According to the guides it is a forest bird in Fiji (and an elusive one, I never saw one in my week there in 2005) but in Tonga I saw it in the towns and country gardens.

Tonga 162

Tonga Fiji New Zealand Parrots 162

10,000 Birds

MARCH 23, 2011

The world of birding is filled with challenging groups well known to all, birds like gulls , Empidonax flycatchers or cisticolas that require attention to the tiniest details in order to assign an individual to a specific species (if it can be done at all). Above we have an example of the species. Subspecies humii , Thailand.

Samoa 168

Samoa Vanuatu United Arab Emirates Tonga 168