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Saving a New Zealand Icon

10,000 Birds

And on this visit, we were there in time to see feeding for the kiwi chicks the centre was raising. Kiwi, New Zealand icons par excellence , are rather endangered. The suite of predators introduced to New Zealand, on the whole, can’t do to much damage to adult kiwi. So what was going on? It goes like this.

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Mega Rarity Tour of New Zealand – Extinction Special

10,000 Birds

We’ll also keep our eyes open for several members of the New Zealand wren family. One of the oldest families of songbirds, which broke off before the oscines and sub-oscines split – and before New Zealand and Antarctica did! New Zealand Bittern. It certainly has no known relatives.

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Bid for the chance to raise Kakapo!

10,000 Birds

The Department of Conservation in New Zealand is giving you, yes you , the chance to spend two days and one night raising Kakapo chicks ! Bidding is on TradeMe (New Zealand’s eBay), and the money raised will go to clearing the Antipodes Islands of introduced rats ( a story we talked about before ).

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Help clear the Antipodes of mice!

10,000 Birds

If you’ve read my posts before you’d know I’ve written at length about the devastating effects of introduced mammals in New Zealand, and also of the ways that New Zealanders have been working to save their species from those same mammals. If the money is raised he will match it to get the work underway.

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Adorable Little Tomtits

10,000 Birds

This isn’t because I don’t like them, on the contrary, they rate as one of New Zealand’s cutest birds, and I’m a big fan of cute. Tomtits, as you might expect from New Zealand, aren’t actual t**s (Paridae) but are one of New Zealand’s four Australasian robins (also not robins).

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Talking Starlings

10,000 Birds

A European Starling in New Zealand made the news this week. This particular species is not native to New Zealand (similar to its status in North America). The woman in the video found it as a chick at a few days old and hand reared it. This is not the first talking European Starling on YouTube.

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The Brown Teal

10,000 Birds

Females and non-breeding males look similar The Brown Teal is endemic to New Zealand, and was once lumped with two closely related island forms, the Auckland Island Teal and the Campbell Teal. Brown Teal chasing a New Zealand Scaup Adult male with almost fully grown youngsters. Almost fully grown young bird.