About this site
This site aims to provide information and spread awareness about the native birds of New Zealand and what can be done to help preserve and conserve their declining populations.
It was created as a bit of a love letter to these beautiful creatures as part of a project for a software development bootcamp.
You can find information about some of the most notable endemic and native birds of New Zealand on the Birds page.
The Conservation page provides more information on what is currently being done to help bird populations across NZ.
If you want to find out more about New Zealand birds and conservation projects you can donate to, check out the Resources page.
What's so special about NZ birds?
New Zealand is home to some of the weirdest and most wonderful bird life in the world. Many of New Zealand's birds have unusual characteristics - some are flightless, some nocturnal, and some extremely long-lived. Many are very colourful and have unique and elaborate courtship displays.
Because of the country's relatively unique geography, some of its birds are adapted for habitats not found elsewhere.
New Zealand is also known as the seabird capital of the world. This website focuses mainly on the land-based birds of New Zealand, but there are around 80 species of seabird in New Zealand and almost a third of them are found nowhere else.
The Birds page shows a few of these wonderful creatures in more detail, but is nowhere near an exhaustive list of bird life in New Zealand.
Check out the Resources page for links to more detailed information on New Zealand's magnificent biodiversity.
A history of NZ birds
Part of the reason New Zealand has such unique and special bird life is that prior to human interference, no mammals had evolved on this island nation (apart from three species of bat).
This meant a huge variety of birds evolved in ways they would never have been allowed to elsewhere in the world where mammal predators would have influenced their evolutionary path.
When Maori settlers arrived in New Zealand (around the 13th century), they brought the kuri (Polynesian Dog) and kiore (Polynesian rat), which were the first mammals introduced to the habitat.
This caused the extinction of a number of bird species at the time.
European settlers then brought 51 further species of mammal, many of which still survive in New Zealand. This led to the extinction of at least four further bird species and many others are now very endangered.
It is not just the introduction of mammals that has led to bird extinction, but it is a significant factor due to the unique evolutionary makeup of New Zealand bird life.
Many of the endemic bird species had evolved little to no defence against the introduced mammals - both predatory mammals and those who competed for food with them.
This has led many in NZ to adopt the "predator free" approach to conservation - check out the Conservation page for more details.