When the British colonists first arrived in New Zealand, this was a really prime spot. It was richer and wetter then Australia, without all the "prison colonists," and with a successful treaty protecting them from the natives. And as soon as the settlers arrived, they began transforming the islands into the familiar sheep-filled hills of the home country.
The native wildlife suffered catastrophically. Within a few decades, the birds had retreated to the high mountain forests, and even those enclaves were being logged. Rabbits and stoats, which had been let loose in the lowlands, ate everything in sight. The sheep-filled countryside must have been eerily silent of birdsong.
In the wake of this devastation, the authorities settled on a solution that boggles the modern mind with it's arrogance and audacity. Having re-created the English countryside in New Zealand, they would now import England's birds to fill it. Thus were formed the Acclimatization Societies of the 19th century. The variety of birds they brought over is impressive: over 1000 each of Starlings and Blackbirds, 500 each of Yellowhammers, Goldfinches, and Redpolls, several hundred Chaffinches (pictured above), Mynas, Song Thrushes, and Mallards, 219 Little Owls, 100 each of Greenfinches and House Sparrows, and a dozen Cirl Buntings. Each of these birds was caught and caged in the home country, then shipped at great expense halfway across the world to be released, dazed and seasick, into the empty countryside.
We North American's are woefully aware of the effects of such actions. It is though the work of our own Acclimatization Society that we now have over 200 million Starlings on the continent, results of an attempt to introduce into Central Park every bird mentioned by Shakespeare.
New Zealand quickly became filled with old-world songbirds, and they still dominate the country. Birding along the famous Manuwata River, we saw hundreds of birds, almost none of them native. Maybe this should be demoralizing, but for the ecological devastation of the Industrial Revolution and the World Wars in England. New Zealand's old-world songbirds are themselves a protected enclave of English wildlife, and I know for a fact the birding here is better then in Britain.
Birdlist along Kapiti Coast, and in the Manuwata Estuary
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