non NZ birds mistakenly shown as NZ birds....

[andrewcrossland]

Hi folks,
Just for general amusement here's a new thread for photos of signs, adverts, public art, books, etc that show non-NZ birds instead of the local species intended:

pic 1 - advert in a CHCH newspaper recently

kingfisher ad.JPG (40.86 KiB) Viewed 2938 times

[Ian McLean]

Hello Andrew
Fisher Funds use both the Common Kingfisher & what could be either a Sacred Kingfisher or Collared Kingfisher in their company logo. In this situation, they appear to be just using their logo in the same way that any company would. You may wish to contact them to suggest that they change their logo & only use a Kotare (Sacred Kingfisher).
Cheers
Ian

[andrewcrossland]

Its a free country so Fisher funds can use whatever image they like, but a Eurasian Kingfisher sp. seems to be one of the most commonly "wrong species" images you come across.
Here's another one (from a children's book about a NZ estuary)

kingfisher1.JPG (58.17 KiB) Viewed 2846 times

[SomesBirder]

This one isn't as extreme, but I think that the last time I visited the Te Papa gift shop, I found a post card that featured some rather unimpressive art of bird species in a New Zealand forest at night.
Instead of a morepork, the card featured a little owl.
I think that it also had either a tui or a pukeko on it, which also oughtn't be featured in art intending to depict nocturnal forest species.

-Somesbirder

[David Riddell]

Don't have a picture of it, but recently I saw a billboard promoting a new subdivision with a wetland area they were very proud of, standing beside the wetland was a very handsome grey heron. Or possibly a great blue heron, I don't remember exactly.

[lloydesler]

Found these illustrations in a 1977 anthology of NZ poetry. Great blue heron, dormouse and this rather unexpected inhabitant of a creek

[andrewcrossland]

Here's some great examples - from a bird ID sign at Moncks Bay, Christchurch. I actually quite like this old sign as it gives me optimism that some of these birds might actually turn up one day!!.

The pics below are copied from a report I reluctantly had to make a while ago outlining the inaccuracies in the sign and supporting its replacement. So there's an image on the left taken from the sign, and next to it is a photo of the bird species I think the image is actually depicting:

sign2.JPG (13.98 KiB) Viewed 2775 times

sign1.JPG (15.98 KiB) Viewed 2775 times

sign3.JPG (20.81 KiB) Viewed 2775 times

[andrewcrossland]

and here's some more:

Sign6.JPG (21.38 KiB) Viewed 2773 times

Sign5.JPG (17.84 KiB) Viewed 2773 times

sign4.JPG (21 KiB) Viewed 2773 times

[RussCannings]

Love these signs. Lazy googling contractors are widespread in North America as well. Some of the more egregious offenders will add another element by advertising a species that does not occur locally and then use a photo of a bird that is neither found locally AND is not the bird mentioned by the caption!

[David Riddell]

One example of the reverse - a native bird mistakenly shown as a non-NZ bird (again no pictures sorry) - I remember seeing a book on nature in NZ back in the late 1970s or early 1980s that had a very nice picture of a yellow-crowned kakariki bearing a caption saying something like: "An Australian parakeet blown across the Tasman Sea adds a splash of colour to the Fiordland bush."

I've also seen a NZ bird calendar featuring a "grey duck" that was actually a mallard. And not a female as you might expect, but a drake only partially in eclipse plumage!

Then there was the old (1970s again) AA road atlas that had an illustrated section on NZ birds that included tomtit, "easily identified by its boldly pied plumage" (or words to that effect). It was a South Island robin...