New Zealand birds

Throughout the trip we were on a quest to find wildlife. Turns out New Zealand has 2 main types of wildlife lizards and birds. With the introduction (either intentional or accidental) of numerous small predatory mammals to the country, the native wildlife plummeted. The lizards are all but gone and most types can be found only on the small outlying predator free islands. During our 2 week trip we saw one skink in the lovely seaside town of Kaikoura (there will be a separate blog later about this little town). The lizards, like the birds, are almost all endemic (meaning occurring nowhere else). While we were unlucky with lizards, we were very lucky with birds. We ended up seeing 54 species of birds over the course of our trip. Most of these birds we had never seen, though there were a few of these birds that we have here in American Samoa. Here is a sampling of the birds we saw.