Friday, January 09, 2009

Birds of New Zealand

New Zealand Kingfisher - Halycon vagans


Grey Kiwi - Apteryx oweni


Blue-Wattled Crow - (Glaucopis wilsoni) -- Orange-Wattled Crow (Glaucopis cinera)


Moho or Takahe - Notornis mantelli


Quail Hawk - Hieracidea novae-zelandiae


Black Fantail - Rhidura fuliginosa + Pied Fantail - Rhipidura plabellifera


Huia (m + f) Heteralocha acutirostris


New Zealand Pigeon - Carpophaga noveae


The Silver-Eye - Zosterops caerulescens + The Bell-Bird - Anthonis melanura (m + f)


The Stitch Bird - Pogonornis cinota


Wandering Albatross - Diomedea eluxans


Yellow-Head, White-Head (Clitonyx spp) + New Zealand Creeper (Certhiparus novae-zealandiae)


North Island + Black Woodhens (Ocydromus spp.)


Pied + Emperor Shags (Phalacrocorax spp.)


'A History of the Birds of New Zealand', 1888 by Sir Walter Lawry Buller is available from the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre at Victoria University of Wellington. Some of the images above were spot-cleaned and a few more examples were saved in this set (that's the majority from the publication). {The 2-volume series is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence}.

Homepage of NZTEC - "free online archive of New Zealand and Pacific Islands texts and heritage materials, which offers an ever expanding, fully searchable, set of images and full-text books, manuscripts and journals [..] contains over 2,600 texts (around 65,000 pages)" [via Armchair Aquarium Annex]

UPDATE: Definitely see Bookn3rd's posts (one & two) for background.

3 comments :

Karla said...

Well, those are certainly very fine, but surely no history of New Zealand birds could possibly be complete without a moa or two. What was Sir Walter thinking of? (Or did he simply lack suitable pictures?) Since it might amuse you: another bit of fantastical moa material for you (not written by me this time).

peacay said...

There are, I seem to recall, pictures of Moa femurs or hip joints / pelvic girdles (maybe comparative pics - I didn't look closely) in there somewhere but I too was amazed that a 'history of nz birds' didn't show a Moa. There is a skeleton of a monster nz goose - something of a relative of the Moa I suspect - in Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Karla said...

Yes, I remember the monster goose well, with its massive leg bones.

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