Holocene extinction may have put some pressure on other birds but at the time of early European contact (18th Century) and colonisation (19th Century) the bird life was prolific. With them, the Europeans brought ship rats, possums, cats and mustelids which decimated native bird life, some of which had adapted flightlessness and ground nesting habits and others had no defensive behavior as a result of having no extant endemic mammalian predators. The kakapo, the world's biggest parrot, which is flightless, now only exists in managed breeding sanctuaries. New Zealand's national emblem, the kiwi, is on the endangered bird list. There has been
Cuban flightless crane Cuban flightless crane The Cuban flightless crane ("Grus cubensis") is a large, extinct species of crane that was endemic to the island of Cuba in the Caribbean. The remains were found in Pleistocene deposits in Pinar del Rio. Probably derived from an early invasion of sandhill cranes from North America, it differed from that species by, as well as larger size, having a proportionately broader bill, stockier legs, and with reduced wings and pectoral girdle indicating that it may have been flightless. Currently, the only extant Caribbean crane is the Cuban sandhill crane, "Antigone canadensis nesiotes", an endangered subspecies of