SI Brown Teal extinct

[ledzep]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/9396503/ ... ck-extinct

I think the Trey-headed Mollymawk is a Grey-headed Mollymawk.
Was the SI Brown Teal a recognised subspecies?

[SomesBirder]

I thought that it was already classified as being extinct.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Ian thinks/thought them different: http://www.birdingnz.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=530

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Southey and Hitchmough, 2000
http://www.doc.govt.nz/documents/scienc ... asn325.pdf

"The taxonomically distinct population from the Chatham Islands is a sister
group to the North Island birds, and the South Island birds lie outside of them
in cladistic analyses of plumage variation (Appendix 4). The mainland teal (if
regarded as a single taxon) are paraphyletic with respect to the Chatham island
teal. To overcome this problem and define monophyletic taxa, the best
resolution is by regarding the North Island and Chatham Islands populations
as taxa of equal rank, most closely related to each other with the South Island
populations consisting of one or more taxa."

[Neil Fitzgerald]

If fantails can be North and South Is subspecies, I think brown teal sure should be.

[Clinton9]

But about Red-billed gulls ???

There is both Chatham Island subspecie of Red-billed gulls and New Zealand subspecie of Red-Billed gulls.

[Ian Southey]

Even when they were known to be present they took some finding so it is hard to say. My last sighting was 2000 but I stopped going into Fiordland soon after that so I can't comment on changes although they were definitely scarce in my time and hard to find.

If there's anybody out there that has the time and bush sense who wants to have a proper look drop me a line. I'll do what I can to help. I suspect they were declining but there was a god little cluster on the South Coast so I hope there's something there. They also had a way of turning up in areas where there hadn't been any prior record of their presence.

Be aware that they look a bit different to the North Island birds. One experienced teal worker was convinced he was looking at a Chestnut Teal the first time he saw one. The males are very bright with prominent green on the head, often a white collar and a very bright and extensive breast while the females are less chocolate brown, in fact about mallard coloured although there is an eye ring if you look for it, differences in size and shape and of course the wing pattern. Also they could be very tame for a duck and that might be the first clue.

Ian

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Hey Ian, your description is interesting. Could it be partly the mallard introgression reported elsewhere that you see? Are there museum skins that might help clarify what a SI brown teal is?

[Ian Southey]

There are museum skins and they show the same features. Even the very old ones. The results of that are in the report you linked to earlier. I didn't have the statistics skills to take it further and neither could I get anybody else to take it on but I think there is enough there to make two species but not with a very simple diagnosis.

Ian

[Michael Szabo]

Several of New Zealand's most cherished bird species - among them the kea and two types of albatross - have been shifted to a more serious conservation status following a national survey:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11157277