#acanthisitti

[best-bird-tournament]

New Zealand wren (Acanthisitti) suborder / family Acanthisittidae

Which is the best bird?

Rifleman

New Zealand rock wren

Voting ended onJan 9

This family and suborder contain just two extant species from two genera (Acanthisitta and Xenicus).

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Consider the Acanthisitti

[dendroica]

Rock wren - a little bird in NZ's big mountains | RNZ

The rock wren is a little bird with large feet and several claims to fame: it belongs to an elite ancient group of birds and is New Zealand’s only truly alpine bird.

Dr Kerry Weston has been studying four populations of rock wrens to find out how they fare in the presence of introduced stoats and rats, and she says sustained trapping in the Haast Range in South Westland has created an “island in the sky” where the threatened rock wrens are thriving.

The rock wren, or tuke, lives above the treeline in the subalpine zone of the South Island.

It is a weak flier, but alpine ecologist Kerry Weston, from the Department of Conservation, says “it has these really big feet that are perfect for rock climbing.”

The rock wren is a high-altitude specialist that has been recorded at elevations as high as 3000 metres, where snow lies year-round.

Kerry says we still don’t know how rock wrens survive winter in the mountains, when the alpine and sub-alpine zones are gripped by ice and snow for many months and temperatures can plummet below -10°C.

She suspects the birds – which weigh just 16-20 grams – go into torpor and lower their energy requirements, although they may come out of torpor to feed in amongst small bushes and grasses that are covered in a blanket of snow.

What makes this winter survival feat particularly impressive is that rock wrens don’t have an insulating layer of down beneath their feathers.

[dendroica]

The song of the rifleman | New Zealand Geographic

In Hawke’s Bay, researchers from the University of Auckland are analysing the full range of rifleman conversation. Bioacoustic recording systems are paired with video cameras at nests to determine which calls are used when. Then, outside of the breeding season, the team is recording and analysing individual birds’ calls in order to detect any variations in calls between birds—differences from year to year, for instance, or between individuals and their parents. All this is to figure out whether riflemen are capable of vocal learning: whether they learn their calls as youngsters by imitating others.

“We think we’ve got a handle on bird sensory systems, but most information is based on very few species,” says study leader Kristal Cain. “New Zealand wrens are important for researchers the world over.”

If riflemen are capable of vocal learning, this is potentially a big deal. While most animals can make sounds, only a few are capable of learning specific calls and using them to communicate specific information. Whales, dolphins, bats, elephants, many songbirds and humans have this ability.

We have become very good vocal learners, but we’re also newbies at it on an evolutionary timescale. If we’re to understand how vocal learning evolved, we need to interrogate birds: they picked it up before we did.

But why pick the tiny rifleman for such a big assignment? There are plenty of great songsters and vocal learners in Aotearoa—tūī, kōkako and bellbirds.

Riflemen belong to a unique group of birds, the New Zealand wrens, which occupy an ancient branch on the tree of life. The lineage of these birds goes back further than any other songbird in the world, forming a previously missing link between parrots and songbirds. Wrens have been in Aotearoa longer than moa and kiwi—they are Gondwanan originals, like tuatara—but this heritage has only recently been identified.

Only two members of the wren family survive: the rock wren, which lives in the alpine zone, and the rifleman, which is scattered unevenly around the country, with fewer in the upper North Island. Sarah Withers reckons this is because the majority of populations of North Island riflemen live at higher altitude—many on mountains—which suits their tolerance for cold and their superpower of torpor. It’s also likely that there are fewer predators at higher altitude.

[alonglistofbirds]

[1968/10977] Bushwren - Xenicus longipes

(extinct)

Order: Passeriformes Suborder: Acanthisitti Family: Acanthisittidae (New Zealand wrens)

Photo credit: Herbert Guthrie-Smith (1911)

[dendroica]

The Bushwren (Xenicus longipes), Bush Wren, or Mātuhituhi in Maori, was a very small and almost flightless bird endemic to New Zealand. It grew to about 9 cm long and 16 g in weight. It fed mostly on invertebrates which it captured by running along the branches of trees. It nested on or near the ground.

It was widespread throughout the main islands of the country until the late 19th century when mustelids were introduced and joined rats as invasive mammalian predators. The only authenticated reports of the North Island subspecies (X. l. stokesi) since 1900 were from the southern Rimutaka Range in 1918 and the Ureweras up to 1955, with probable sightings on June 13, 1949, near Lake Waikareiti, and several times in the first half of the 20th century in the Huiarau Range, and from Kapiti Island in 1911 (Edgar, 1949; St. Paul & McKenzie, 1977; Miskelly, 2003). Apparently, the last population lived in the area where Te Urewera National Park was established, ironically just around the time of its extinction.

The last authenticated reports of the South Island subspecies (X. l. longipes) were from Arthur's Pass in 1966 and Nelson Lakes National Park in 1968. There have been a few unsubstantiated reports since then from Fiordland and Nelson Lakes.

The third subspecies, X. l. variabilis or Stead's Bushwren, was found on Stewart Island/Rakiura and nearby islands. It is known to have survived on Stewart Island until 1951 (Dawson, 1951) but was probably exterminated by feral cats. It lived on Kotiwhenua (Solomon) Island, being reasonably common, until the early 1960s. It survived on predator-free Big South Cape Island until Black Rats invaded it in 1964. The New Zealand Wildlife Service attempted to save the species by relocating all the birds they could capture. They caught six birds and transferred them to Kaimohu Island where they did not survive and died in 1972.

The species is probably extinct but it is not impossible that it survives.

(via Wikipedia)

[dendroica]

The Rifleman (Acanthisitta chloris) (Māori: Tītipounamu) is a small insectivorous passerine bird that is endemic to New Zealand. It belongs to the Acanthisittidae family, also known as the New Zealand wrens, of which it is one of only two surviving species. The Rifleman resembles a wren in form but is not related to the family of true wrens, Troglodytidae, nor the fairy-wrens of Australia. The Rifleman is named after a colonial New Zealand regiment because its plumage drew similarities with the military uniform of a rifleman.

(via Wikipedia)