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Birds of New Zealand
Being an island nation with a history of long isolation and having no land mammals apart from bats, the birds of New Zealand evolved into an avifauna that included a large number of endemic species (that is, species found in no other country). Over the 65 million year isolation from any other land mass New Zealand became a land of birds and when Captain James Cook arrived in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening. Māori and European settlement has been the cause of a huge decline in the numbers of birds and the extinction of over 40% of the 115 or more endemic species.
==History after human settlement==
New Zealand birds were, until the arrival of the first humans, an extraordinarily diverse range of specialised birds. In New Zealand, the ecological niches normally occupied by mammals as different as rodents, kangaroos and moles, were filled by reptiles, insects, or birds. The only terrestrial mammals were three species of bat (of which two survive today).
When humans arrived in New Zealand about 700 years ago this unique and unusual ecology became endangered. Several species were hunted to extinction, most notably the moa and harpagornis. The most damage however was caused by habitat destruction and the other animals humans brought with them, particularly rats (the Polynesian rat or kiore introduced by Māori and the brown rat and black rat subsequently introduced by Europeans), but also mice, dogs, cats, stoats, weasels, pigs, goats, deer, hedgehogs, and Australian possums. The flightless birds were in particular danger. Consequently, many bird species became extinct, and others remain critically endangered. Several species are now confined only to offshore islands, or to fenced "ecological islands" from which predators have been eliminated. New Zealand is today a world leader in the techniques required to bring severely endangered species back from the brink of extinction.
During the early years of European settlement many bird species were introduced for both sport and for a connection with the settler's homelands. New Zealand had a starkly different appearance to the countries from where the settlers came.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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