BirdingNZ.net

Its a interesting question, they are currently listed as non resident native - coloniser in the lastest 2016 DOC threat ranking along with Australian little grebe, nakeen night heron and barn owl so they do have the native rank.
It might be when the population increases somewhat then they are moved to the not threatened native ranking that sits with other colonisers like spur winged plover and white faced heron etc.

below is the pdf and the ibis is on page 19
https://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/scien ... entire.pdf

fras44

There are labels for everything. Sometimes they are "or" categories like native/indigenous or introduced/exotic. Everything is either one or the other. A sub-category of native is "endemic" which might be what are calling "true native".

A totally independent set of labels ("and"), but only applying to native birds, vagrant and straggler are loose terms sliding from rare to regular occurrence. Some of them might be best thought of as rare migrants, others are Aussie nomads responding to floods and droughts seabirds get pushed out of range by El Nino or La Nina conditions but there is some pattern behind most of them.

Is this making sense yet?

Ian

The NZ Threat Classification System is the authoritative work on many of these questions and it is worth a skim at least.
You can download the full 2008 revision of the manual from the DOC website: NZ Threat Classification System manual 2008. By Andrew J. Townsend, Peter J. de Lange, Clinton A.J. Duffy, Colin M. Miskelly, Janice Molloy and David A. Norton.
This chart from the manual shows where Migrant and Vagrant sit under Native. And yes, by default any such birds are fully protected under NZ law.



From page 25 the manual clarifies the categories for non-resident native species alive in the wild.
Migrant: Taxa that predictably and cyclically visit New Zealand as part of their normal life cycle (a minimum of 15 individuals known or presumed to visit per year), but do not breed here.
Vagrant: Taxa that are found unexpectedly in New Zealand and whose presence in this region is naturally transitory, or migratory species with fewer than 15 individuals known or presumed to visit per year.
Coloniser: Taxa that otherwise trigger ‘Threatened’ categories because of small population size, but have arrived in New Zealand without direct or indirect help from humans and have been successfully reproducing in the wild since 1950.

As I had always been given ti understand that "Endemic" meant exclusive to an area, I found the following international meaning.

What is the difference between endemic and native?
In biology and ecology, endemic means exclusively native to the biota of a specific place. An indigenous species may occur in areas other than the one under consideration. The terms endemic and indigenous do not imply that an organism necessarily originated or evolved from where it is found.
Cheers, Grahame

Hi everyone,

I spent a few hours down the end of Hardings Road over the last couple of days. Really good numbers of glossy Ibis around both on the island and on a couple of nearby shallow ponds.

I was interested to see in one of my images that one individual was flying with a 'droopy' leg. I'm picking this is the same bird as the very first one that showed up several years ago, which was always identifiable by that funny leg.

Matt.

Superb shots!!

Great photos!

Colorful beauties !

awesome mate so cool

Just an update saw 12 irds today all showing colour - looks like we might be in population increase.