Editorial: Familiarity breeds bird contempt

Photo / Duncan Brown

In Shanghai I stumbled across caged wax eyes for sale on a street corner.

It was unnerving to witness one of our beautiful natives, tauhou, sit nervously imprisoned in neat, bamboo enclosures.

As a traveller in a strange land, it raised a few interesting questions. Namely, whose birds are these?

Here, they're classified as a native. Which, of course, doesn't preclude also being native to China, or any other territory they may have landed without the help of man.

If they're not native to China, then they're exotic in that country, and therefore in the People's Republic would occupy the same category to that of a caged budgie here. To be native, is relative to where you're standing.

Either way, the expression "native to New Zealand", technically, doesn't make sense. By definition, native refers to species that were self-introduced, for example, blown to a new land in a blizzard.

"Endemic" is the word most are searching for. Birds of this category exist no where else but here. One could argue, extra special species.

Why the taxonomy lesson?

Well, the humble pukeko, a true-blue native, is coping inordinate flack of late, ostensibly due to questions over its identity. It seems some like them only for the sound they make when you hit them in cars.

I can't fathom that. What's not to like about the colour co-ordination of iridescent indigo and scarlet, accessorised with a flick of pure-white?

As I read somewhere else, the truth - no matter what intrinsic value it holds - is that the pukeko is a contempt bred from familiarity.

Despite being here for roughly 900 years before us, this delightfully awkward bird is somehow seen as an invader.

How anyone can have such apathy for a bird nature chose to exist here, I find slightly bemusing.