OzAnimals
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The bird section of the OzAnimals website has an alphabetical list of all Australian birds, but what's of more interest
to most people is the index on the left of the page, which takes you to galleries of birds arranged by family. The
photos in the galleries are high quality and large enough to use for identification purposes. You can then click on
any bird name to see a page devoted to that bird, which usually contains facts about it. Last visited in February of 2010.
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Birds in Backyards
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The Birds in Backyards website is associated with the Australian Museum. It has a good Bird Finder which allows people
to quickly track down birds they're interested in. The photos in the photo galleries produced by the Bird Finder are
very small, but still useable, and clicking on a photo takes you to a very useful fact sheet for that bird. Last
visited in February of 2010.
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Australasian bird image database
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Tom and Marie Tarrant's Australasian bird image database hosts a huge number of photos supplied by different people. There
used to be photo galleries arranged by family or species, but now you get a list of species and have to click on the species to
see the photos, which makes it very difficult to use this site for identification. Last visited in February of 2010.
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New
Zealand birds |
 A
somewhat depressing website which starts by listing how many of the native
birds have become extinct, but has good birdwatching
trip reports and links, and a comprehensive list
of New Zealand birds together with photographs and very good descriptions.
Unfortunately, some parts of the website use only the native Maori names
of the birds, which might be wonderfully Politically Correct, but very
unhelpful. After all, the Maori are relatively recent migrants
to New Zealand, just like Europeans! |
Department
of Conservation: Birds |
 The
Department of Conservation (or "Doc", as it's usually called) is the government
department charged with nature management in New Zealand. This
website has a very good set of pages describing endemic birds.
Last visited in January of 2008. |
Tiritiri
Matangi Bird Sanctuary |
 About
an hour by ferry from downtown Auckland, the
island of Tiritiri Matangi is a sanctuary with many very rare
species which are difficult to see anywhere else. This
sanctuary is a must see for people interested in birds, but the website
lacks photographs and isn't updated often. Last visited in
June of 2006. |
Kakapo
Recovery Programme |
This
very nicely done website starts by telling you that there are 6 billion
humans on the planet, but only 36 kakapo, the world's largest parrot and
flightless and nocturnal, to boot! As the website starts up, you'll
hear the bizarre un-birdlike "booming" call it makes. |
New
Zealand Penguins |
This
website has information about the seven varieties of penguin which make
their home around the New Zealand coastline. Good photos of
the penguins are included, along with information about where they can
be viewed. The list of viewing sites even includes wild penguin
viewing sites in Australia, South America and South Africa, and zoos in
the UK, USA and South America. |