Consequently, Auckland is today one of the most altered of New Zealand’s environments, most of the obvious birds and trees being exotics. However, there are pockets of native timber, even within the city limits, (for example, the karaka in the Auckland Domain) and good stands of trees in the hills to the south and north.

The earliest exotic still standing is a eucalypt of unknown species planted by the Rev. James Hamlin at Orua Bay on the Manukau in 1836, but my personal favourites include the Kaffir boom in front of Auckland University, the Holm oak at St Barnabas's Church at Mt Eden, the olive grove in Cornwall Park, the Chilean wine palm and the hoop pine at Monte Cecilia School, Hillsborough Road, and lastly the beautiful maidenhair tree and the tree of heaven in Albert Park.

The two most common gulls, the black-backed and the red-billed, are natives and have adapted well to city life with its rich pickings for scavengers, but other endemics are not so obvious. Walk through the Domain or Cornwall Park and you will probably see, or at least hear the occasional tui, grey warbler, white-eye and fantail, but the majority of birds will be a motley lot of adventives, mostly from Britain and Europe.

Elsewhere in the city there are numerous small parks and reserves, few large enough to support viable populations of native birds, but with fine trees nevertheless. Information about these parks can be obtained from the numerous brochures and maps the Auckland City Council regularly produces.

One reserve that does have large numbers of native birds is Tahuna Torea, a 28-hectare sandspit and mangrove lagoon projecting into the Tamaki Estuary. A walkway encircles the entire reserve which takes about an hour to walk around. However, check the tides since part of the walkway is only accessible at low tide. As to be expected, the most common birds seen here are waterfowl - pukeko, grey duck, mallards, and even black swans. Of the wading birds, expect to see pied stilts, godwits and pied oystercatchers - the Maori name of Tahuna Torea means 'the haunt of the oystercatcher'.

Auckland Zoo at Point Chevalier has a relatively good collection of exotic animals in charming surrounds, but considering it is the largest establishment of its kind in the country, its native collection is dismal. There are a few tui, weka and a couple of pied stilt, as well as ducks scattered among the waterfowl. Kaka have a cage to themselves, which they in true parrot fashion are constantly in the process of rearranging, and there is the now ubiquitous Kiwi House, with its usual onlookers thumping the glass right next to the sign directing them not to. If your interest is in native fauna and you are travelling south, you would be well advised to wait until you get to Otorohanga or Mt Bruce. The walk-through aviary will be quite splendid when the trees have attained a bit of size, but a bit more variety in the native bird collection wouldn’t go amiss.

The Auckland Museum has a natural history section, but the dioramas in Wellington and Canterbury are better and the birds both there and in Dunedin are not so obviously stuffed.

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