Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
North Island kākā. New Zealand is geographically isolated, and originally lacked any mammalian predators, hence parrots evolved to fill habitats from the ground dwelling kākāpō to the alpine dwelling kea as well as a variety of forest species.
The New Zealand parrot family, Strigopidae, [1] consists of at least three genera of parrots – Nestor, Strigops, the fossil Nelepsittacus, [2] [3] and probably the fossil Heracles. [4] The genus Nestor consists of the kea, kākā, Norfolk kākā and Chatham kākā, [5] [6] while the genus Strigops contains the iconic kākāpō. [5]
This is the list of the birds of New Zealand. The common name of the bird in New Zealand English is given first, and its Māori-language name, if different, is also noted. The North Island and South Island are the two largest islands of New Zealand. Stewart Island is the largest of the smaller islands.
Kea are the protagonists in New Zealand author Philip Temple's novels Beak of the Moon (1981) and Dark of the Moon (1993), recounting respectively the first encounters of a group of kea with humans at the time of the colonisation of the South Island by Māori, and their life in present-day, human-dominated New Zealand.
As an island archipelago, New Zealand accumulated bird diversity, and when Captain James Cook arrived in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening. The mix includes species with unusual biology such as the kākāpō which is the world's only flightless, nocturnal parrot which also exhibits competitive display breeding using leks .
The New Zealand kākā is a medium-sized parrot, measuring 45 cm (18 in) in length and weighing from 390 to 560 g (14 to 20 oz), with an average of 452 g (0.996 lb). [15] It is closely related to the kea, but has darker plumage and is more arboreal. The forehead and crown are greyish-white and the nape is greyish brown.
The kākāpō was a very successful species in pre-human New Zealand, and was well adapted to avoid the birds of prey which were their only predators. As well as the New Zealand falcon, there were two other birds of prey in pre-human New Zealand: Haast's eagle and Eyles' harrier. [49]
The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoidea ("true" parrots), the Cacatuoidea (cockatoos), and the Strigopoidea (New Zealand parrots). [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Parrots have a generally pantropical distribution with several species inhabiting temperate regions in the Southern Hemisphere as well.