The North Island Piopio, Turnagra tanagra, was a passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 of the Turnagridae

Turnagridae

The Turnagridae or piopio are a pair of passerine birds endemic to New Zealand, both of which are now considered extinct. Sometimes described as New Zealand Thrushes, the Piopio had only a coincidental, passing resemblance to the Thrush family. Piopio have been a longstanding taxonomic mystery...

 family. The North Island Piopio is now considered to be extinct. The Māori

Maori language

Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...

 names were piopio-kata (also transcribed as tiutiu-kata), and in the Kaipara

Kaipara District

-Geography:Kaipara District is located in the low hills around the northern shores of the Kaipara Harbour, a large natural harbour open to the Tasman Sea...

 dialect, korohea.

Taxonomy

For many years, the North Island Piopio was considered to be conspecific with the South Island Piopio

South Island Piopio

The South Island Piopio, Turnagra capensis, also known as the New Zealand Thrush, was a passerine bird of the Turnagridae family, found only in New Zealand.-Taxonomy:...

, but the two are now regarded as two separate species due to their pronounced differences in external appearance and apparently also osteology

Osteology

Osteology is the scientific study of bones. A subdiscipline of anatomy, anthropology, and archeology, osteology is a detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, morphology, function, disease, pathology, the process of ossification , the resistance and hardness of bones , etc...

 (Olson et al., 1983).

Extinction

The North Island Piopio was endemic

Endemic (ecology)

Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...

 to the North Island

North Island

The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the much less populous South Island by Cook Strait. The island is in area, making it the world's 14th-largest island...

 of New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and was described by Walter Buller

Walter Buller

Walter Lawry Buller KCMG was a New Zealand lawyer, naturalist and ornithologist.Buller was the author of A History of the Birds of New Zealand , with illustrations by John Gerrard Keulemans. In 1882 he produced the Manual of the Birds of New Zealand as a cheaper, popular alternative...

 as being common in 1873, although only a few specimens were ever collected, and it declined rapidly after that time (Buller, 1888). The last specimens were collected in 1900, or more probably in 1885/1886 (Medway, 1968), and by the 1960s only around 27 specimens remained in museums worldwide. Occasional sight records of people claiming to have seen the bird (e.g. Sopp, 1957) persisted until 1970 (Bell & Singleton, 1974; Olsen 1993), but the North Island Piopio is considered extinct nowadays. Its last stronghold appears to have been the area that later became the Whanganui National Park

Whanganui National Park

The Whanganui National Park is a national park located in the North Island of New Zealand. Established in 1986, it covers an area of 742 km² bordering the Whanganui River. It incorporates areas of Crown land, former state forest and a number of former reserves. The river itself is not part of the...

, possibly extending northeast to the Hauhungaroa Range west of Lake Taupo

Lake Taupo

Lake Taupo is a lake situated in the North Island of New Zealand. With a surface area of , it is the largest lake by surface area in New Zealand, and the second largest freshwater lake by surface area in geopolitical Oceania after Lake Murray ....

. The introduction of foreign predatory mammals such as cat

Cat

The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...

s and rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

s to New Zealand's North Island is mostly to blame for the North Island Piopio's extinction, with habitat loss and predation by mustelids also being significant from the 1880s onwards.

External links

• North Island Piopio. Turnagra tanagra. by Paul Martinson. Artwork produced for the book Extinct Birds of New Zealand, by Alan Tennyson, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2006