South Island Saddleback

About the South Island Saddleback

The South Island saddleback or tīeke (Philesturnus carunculatus) is a forest-dwelling passerine bird in the New Zealand wattlebird family which is endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. Both the North Island saddleback and this species were formerly considered conspecific. The Department of Conservation currently has the South Island saddleback listed as At Risk--Declining.

The South Island saddleback was first formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the starlings in the genus Sturnus and coined the binomial name Sturnus carunculatus. The specific epithet carunculatus is Latin for a small piece of flesh, hence wattles. Gmelin based his description on the "wattled stare" that had been described and illustrated in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham has examined a specimen in the collection of the Leverian Museum in London that had come from New Zealand. The word "stare" is an archaic word for a starling. The South Island saddleback is now placed with the North Island saddleback in the... Wikipedia →