A working list of breeding bird species of the New Zealand region at first human contact

Abstract

We present an annotated working list of the bird species breeding in New Zealand during the late Pleistocene and Holocene, up to the time of human contact. New Zealand is defined as including the three main islands and the surrounding smaller islands, plus outlying island groups from Norfolk Island in the northwest, the Kermadec, Chatham, Bounty, Antipodes, Campbell, Auckland, Snares, to Macquarie Islands, but excluding islands south of Macquarie Island and the Ross Dependency. Inclusions or exclusions of species from the list were based on specified criteria. We include only species with a breeding population and not vagrants that occur in New Zealand but which breed elsewhere. Species with validly published names were included if there was fossil evidence for a breeding population

Pre-European Maori exploitation of marine resources in two New Zealand case study areas: species range and temporal change

“…Furthermore shag, shearwater and petrel bones that have not been positively identified to species occur in a moderately large number of assemblages, and sometimes as abundantly as the positively identified taxa, suggesting that some of the latter may be under-represented. Eighteen of the positively recorded species are thought to have been breeding in northern New Zealand at the time of first human arrival (Holdaway et al 2001). For five of these, bones of immature animals have been reported from at least one study assemblage, indicating exploitation of breeding sites.…”

“…The only other species that ever form a significant part of the study assemblages are two shearwaters (sooty, fluttering), and the pied shag. Nine of these 10 species are thought to have maintained breeding populations in southern New Zealand at the time of human arrival (Holdaway et al 2001). …”

Genetic affinities of newly sampled populations of Wandering and Black-browed Albatross

“…1) are more closely related to D. exulans of the southern Indian and Atlantic Oceans than D. antipodensis and D. gibsoni found in the New Zealand subantarctic region (Holdaway et al 2001). The first records of wanderingtype albatrosses breeding on Macquarie Island came from visits by sealers in the early 1800s but the records provide no estimate of breeding numbers (de la Mare and Kerry 1994;Tickell 2000).…”

Stable isotopic (δ15N, δ13C) analysis of wood in trees growing in past and present colonies of burrow‐nesting seabirds in New Zealand. I. δ15N in two species of conifer (Podocarpaceae) from a mainland colony of Westland petrels (Procellaria westlandica), Punakaiki, South Island

“…The extensive colonies of ground-breeding petrels and shearwaters that once occupied the New Zealand mainland before human contact (Holdaway et al 2001) are now nearly all gone (Holdaway 1999). Although these seabirds probably provided a substantial nutrient source to terrestrial ecosystems (Worthy & Holdaway 2002), the consequences of the loss of marine nutrient inputs from the main islands of New Zealand are unknown.…”