JaneAS

Here in England I have masses of wildlife in my garden. Lots of birds come for the food I put out, we have tame squirrels who come to the kitchen window for hand feeding, a pond that is teeming with life, hedgehogs, wild rabbits and foxes. My little'un loves identifying birds on the feeders, and examining all the 'mini-beasts'.

It made me wonder, what kinds of wildlife abound in NZ, to look forward to?
We are planning to move to C/Church. What species of birds do you have? Are there any good websites for us to look at?

Thanks,
Jane

RADI

We have bird feeders in the garden and get a good selection of local wild birds using them .Mostly they are the same birds you get in the UK as a lot of them were introduced here .It is nice to see familiar known breeds and watch them feeding .We gat a lot of blackbirds,green finch and chaffinches at the moment .

P2L

We're on South Island and get a lot of the usual culprits such as starlings, blackbirds & sparrows but also tons of goldfinches, silvereyes and fantails all of which seem quite happy to share the space with us humans. Fantails in particular are very friendly birds.

You also see a lot of kingfishers when you're on your travels, for some reason they seem to like sitting on the phone lines, not sure why

Also very, very popular, in our area at least, are the hawks. They are actually harriers but are referred to as hawks here. They fly over the vineyards and it's not unusual to see them sat at the side of the road enjoying their prey.

I saw a Tui at the weekend having a go at a chaffinch.

HTH

JaneAS

Thank you! I am glad we will still see sparrows, blackbirds and starlings, I adore the starlings in the big, noisy flocks. Have you ever seen them going to roost, like a huge black cloud?

Do you also get swallows or blue tits? And what about owls?

We also have bats in the garden, I think they nest under our eaves! Do you have any bats in NZ? And how about hedgehogs?

Jane

P2L

Try here

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/abo...ture-fauna.cfm

Looks like some more useful links at the bottom of the page.


P.S yes to the hedgehogs

RADI

Plenty of BATS here but they are all Pink ones and can be found breeding at most diy stores
Lots of Hedgehogs mostly seen looking for their FLATMATES on the state highways,sparrows and thrush,blackbirds,yellowhammers,finches,greenfinch ,chaffinch .Hawks are a common sight ,there are swallows and bluetits also.You will find most of the birds here and some of the wildlife is very much the same as the UK ,Possum are common here also but mostly seen on the roads with the hedgehogs.
There ia enough local wildlife to entertain you once you get here .We love it

Woodlea

Seen plenty of tits recently, which is really nice

karonious

Those native bred or imported!

Woodlea

Native - babe!!!

SarahB

I jumped up and down at the weekend.... all excited like a little kid as we had Eastern Rosellas in our old plum tree. I've seen them in the next village but never here before. Ive seen pairs of Lorikeets here too but they were the green ones and a bit boring to look at.

http://www.nzbirds.com/birds/easternrosella.html

southerner

We have bird feeder in our garden, and have:

waxeyes
tuis
bellbirds
wood pigeons
fantails
grey warblers

common introduced birds are:
sparrows
dunnocks
thrushs
blackbirds
chaffinch, goldfinch, greenfinch
skylarks
yellowhammers
starlings


other birds relatively easy to find in the Dunedin area are:

tomtits
riflemen
spoonbills
white faced herons
fernbirds
banded dotterels
harriers
NZ falcon
royal albatrosses
yellow eyed penguins
blue penguins
various shags
kingfishers
pippits
redpolls
eastern rosellas
spurwing plovers
SI pied & variable oystercatchers

southerner

I have in Rotorua - there seemed to be millions there.

No tits, but waxeyes are probably the equivalent in NZ.
We get housemartins, owls are fairly rare. There is one native morepork (often heard in the bush) and an introduced one (the little owl).

BEVS

We also get most of the above either in the garden or around the village and estuary where we live.
Being top of the South Island we don't get the Albatross or Yellow eyed penguins.
There are little blue penguins apparently but we haven't seen any yet.
The Tuis are extremely entertaining birds & we've had several fantails doing loop the loops in the house.

I would love to see these eastern rosellas or some lorikeets. We have been skiing with the Kea parrots up at Rainbow though. .

There are hedgehogs all over the place and skinks.

I think its safe to say that the place abounds with wildlife on the doorstep.

dlmckay

Out west, there's a flock of cockatoos! Quite amazing to see and they're very noisy!

No-one's mentioned the possums?

RobClubley

We get loads of wildlife in the garden - lots of different birds, skinks, all sorts.

And insects!


The bird in the box is a silvereye/waxeye - the cat brought it in injured, poor thing. Should have left her to finish it off I think - it lasted 30 hours and was eating and drinking but then snuffed it