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Kiaora (Hello in Maori from New Zealand) ...

HazelAngel said:
Heres the Kea ... scientific name is Nestor notabilis.

Bold_kea_close-up.jpg


For me with New Zealand Parrots, mine happens to be the South Island Kaka but my boyfriend, his one is the Kea ;) Its also his favourite New Zealand bird :) Mine, different altogether. Haast Eagle but my favourite existing bird is the Whio.
Click to expand...


That is one big freakin parrot
 
Wow HazelAngel! You have a lot of interests and experiences to which I can relate in a roundabout way. One of my particular interests is Sydney Parkinson, he was the first European explorer to paint many of your lovely New Zealand plants and birds and he kept extensive notes on the Maori language and culture, and sketches of the Maori people. I have worked with many of his original paintings and notebooks at the British Museum, the Natural History Museum in London, British Library, and the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London. Now I am trying to learn more about New Zealand, the Maori language and culture, and NZ botany and ornithology. I would love to have your job, working at the plant nursery!

The paintings are beautiful, if you have not seen them I can try to copy a photo to show you one or two. But I imagine they are more commonly seen in New Zealand than where I live, in the US.

Do you know what is the cause of the difference in speciation of the Kaka parrots between North and South Island? The two islands don't seem remote from one another, so it makes me curious. Of course I could look it up which I will do, but I wonder if you had some insight first?

I work as the manager of a small natural history collection at a private college. One of our best specimens is an extinct Carolina parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis.
 
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Thanks Naturalist. I do think I have never seen any paintings by him but I have seen paintings and sketches by Sir Walter Buller, one of my distant relatives (a brother in law to Captain Gilbert Mair) and I do think he did some good ones like of the Huia. I will see if I can find that one for you Naturalist.

They are Nestor meridionalis species of group. The nestor family has the Kea in it. Found this then for you ...

The New Zealand kaka was described by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788. There are two subspecies, the North Island kākā, Nestor meridionalis septentrionalis, and the South Island kākā, N. m. meridionalis. The name kākā is a Maori language word meaning "parrot", possibly related to kā, 'to screech'. The genus Nestor contains four species: the New Zealand kaka (Nestor meridionalis), the kea (N. notabilis), the extinct Norfolk kaka (N. productus), and the extinct Chatham kaka (N. sp.). All four are thought to stem from a "proto-kākā", dwelling in the forests of New Zealand five million years ago. Their closest relative is the kakapo (Strigops habroptila). Together, they form the parrot family Strigopidae, an ancient group that split off from all other Psitticidae before their radiation.

So hopefully that answers your question. Its a sub-species. Got the info and found that ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_kaka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_parrot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelepsittacus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_(genus)

New Zealand is made out of 3 Islands if you look at the map, South Island, North Island and Stewart Island. As well as Kaka, there are other examples of kinds of animals like this e.t.c the Stout Legged Wren. New Zealand has many outlying islands like Stephens Island (The Stephens Island Wren was there until a domestic houscat killed the entire population), Maud Island, Chatham Island, Norfolk Island etc. I can tell you there is a famous Kakapo called Sir Rocco. Your bound to see Stephen Fry meeting him on Youtube. No famous Kaka that I know of.

The reason why New Zealand has or had so many birds (this is interesting to me) is because New Zealand had less mammals but plenty of reptiles like the Tuatara and plenty of insects like the Weta. We only have a few species of bat (2 yet 2 became extinct, one in the Mesoic area and the other, no idea when that one became extinct) and there was a small mouse-like animal found in New Zealand up until the late Meosoic area. This is why the Haast Eagle got to be so big and the rest of it goes on. New Zealand was also a part of Gondwana, not Laurasia which is also an interesting fact in itself.
 
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HazelAngel said:
Thanks Naturalist. I do think I have never seen any paintings by him but I have seen paintings and sketches by Sir Walter Buller, one of my distant relatives (a brother in law to Captain Gilbert Mair) and I do think he did some good ones like of the Huia. I will see if I can find that one for you Naturalist.
Click to expand...

Ah, yes--Buller's History of the Birds of New Zealand. It has many lovely engravings, I am certain the sketches were also exquisite. It seems for you that birds are a longstanding family interest!

Here is a link that has some of Sydney Parkinson's birds, though many of his New Zealand paintings are not yet digitized:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?searchText=Sydney+Parkinson

Also, his botanical illustrations from the Endeavour voyage are here:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/de.../endeavour-botanical-illustrations/index.dsml

If you click on the map at New Zealand, the New Zealand species will display.

And one more from the National Library of Australia, which includes some of Parkinson's early paintings which were in the collection of one of his mentors:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/picture/result?l-format=Art+work&q=Sydney+parkinson&s=0

I couldn't recall how to make an image show in the actual post.

HazelAngel said:
They are Nestor meridionalis species of group. The nestor family has the Kea in it. Found this then for you ...
Together, they form the parrot family Strigopidae, an ancient group that split off from all other Psitticidae before their radiation.

So hopefully that answers your question. Its a sub-species. Got the info and found that ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_kaka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_parrot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelepsittacus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_(genus)
Click to expand...

The history of these birds is fascinating!! The origins of their name suggest they are very noisy. I also found this page which suggests that the speciation occurred between North and South Island kaka during a major glaciation, about 400,000 years ago:

http://www.nzscienceteacher.co.nz/c...volution-of-new-zealand-parrots/#.Vpl-Rq88KrX

It is funny you mention the Stephen's Island wren, I was just describing that extinction phenomenon to one of my students, to explain why introduced mammals (even one) are such a threat to indigenous wildlife. We had a discussion of it here too, with respect to raccoons in the UK / Europe, sometime after Christmas.

I really enjoyed your post, it's always very nice to meet someone who is knowledgeable about natural history.
 
Hit 'Play' then it will load for you so you can hear them making their sound. If people recorded them making sounds like the Kea, then they are heard Naturalist.
 
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