section_path: Geography/Fauna
section_name: Fauna
paragraph_text: Fauna
  
  The aptly named Pacific kingfisher is found in the Pacific Islands, as is the Red-vented bulbul, Polynesian starling, Brown goshawk, Pacific Swallow and the Cardinal myzomela, among others. Birds breeding on Pitcairn include the fairy tern, common noddy, and red-tailed tropicbird. The Pitcairn reed warbler, endemic to Pitcairn Island, was added to the endangered species list in 2008.
  
  Native to Hawaii is the Hawaiian crow, which has been extinct in the wild since 2002. The brown tree snake is native to northern and eastern coasts of Australia, Papua New Guinea, Guam and Solomon Islands. Native to Australia, New Guinea and proximate islands are birds of paradise, honeyeaters, Australasian treecreeper, Australasian robin, kingfishers, butcherbirds, and bowerbirds.
  
  A unique feature of Australia's fauna is the relative scarcity of native placental mammals, and dominance of the marsupials – a group of mammals that raise their young in a pouch, including the macropods, possums, and dasyuromorphs. The passerines of Australia, also known as songbirds or perching birds, include wrens, the magpie group, thornbills, corvids, pardalotes, lyrebirds. Predominant bird species in the country include the Australian magpie, Australian raven, the pied currawong, crested pigeons and the laughing kookaburra. The koala, emu, platypus and kangaroo are national animals of Australia, and the Tasmanian devil is also one of the well-known animals in the country. The goanna is a predatory lizard native to the Australian mainland.
  
  The birds of New Zealand evolved into an avifauna that included a large number of endemic species. As an island archipelago New Zealand accumulated bird diversity and when Captain James Cook arrived in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening. The mix includes species with unusual biology such as the kākāpō which is the world's only flightless, nocturnal, lek-breeding parrot, but also many species that are similar to neighbouring land areas. Some of the more well known and distinctive bird species in New Zealand are the kiwi, kea, takahē, Kākāpō, mohua, tūī, and the bellbird. The tuatara is a notable reptile endemic to New Zealand.
  
  Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Wallacea, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean collectively possess 42% of the world's parrot species, including half of all Critically Endangered parrots, many of which are endemic to the region.