New Zealand's Extinct Birds

Forest and Bird, Volume 23, Issue 1, 1 February 1992, Page 46

New Zealand's Extinct Birds

Mark Bellingham

by Brian Gill and Paul Martinson (Random Century New Zealand Ltd) $49.95 The family group of huia on the dust jacket is a taste of what readers can expect, in what is undoubtedly the best book yet produced on New Zealand’s extinct birds. Paul Martinson’s illustrations are stunning and Brian Gill’s text is a fine accompaniment for its accuracy and clarity. Oliver’s 1955 edition of New Zealand Birds included some of these species, but since that time there has been extensive revision of moa taxonomy, with the number of species reduced from 28 to 11, and the extensive work of Ron Scarlett, Trevor Worthy and Phil Millener on a range of subfossil dune and cave bird bone deposits. This work has

added a number of new species and more information on previously described species. The section on prehuman extinctions has put some flesh around a few obscure bones from 2-40 million years ago. This includes 13 penguins (including the 1.5-metre, 100-kilo-gram giant penguin), the bizarre false-tooth pelicans (with one twice the size of an albatross!) and an extinct albatross. The section on moa covers their ecology, diet and breeding. But I found the section on Other PreEuropean Extinctions the most interesting, with 21 birds from nine different families. The paucity of our knowledge of extinct seabirds is highlighted by this book. New species and forms lie undescribed in collections of bones and the odd study skin which await the same taxonomic intensity that has gone into our land birds. This book serves to emphasise the fact that Polynesian settlers and early Maori extinguished at least 32 bird species before Europeans arrived. As with the settlement of Hawaii and other iflands in the Pacific, they relied heavily on easily available food (birds, marine mammals and fish) until they were forced to revert to a largely horticultural economy. %