The end of the crimson rosellas

Back when I started birding and saw the crimson rosella in Robertson & Heather's field guide, it was one of the birds that I was most looking forward to finding. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that this was no longer possible, as the last of the genuinely wild birds died out before the late 1990s.

There have been two instances of the crimson rosella occurring in the wild in NZ in small numbers. The first of these was in Otago. W. R. B. Oliver's New Zealand Birds, the second edition published in 1955, reads, 'About 1910 a small shipment of Eastern Rosellas, including a few Crimson Rosellas, that had been refused entry into New Zealand by the Customs Department, was released off Otago Heads by the ship which brought them as she was returning to Sydney. The two species crossed and now no pure birds of the crimson rosella remain in the Dunedin area'.

This probably means that all of Dunedin's eastern rosellas are technically hybrids, but because they breed 'true to type', they are considered to be pure eastern rosellas, phenotype-wise. It would be interesting if DNA testing could confirm this, but there's a good chance that any crimson rosella DNA that these birds carry is now dilute to the point of being undetectable.

The second instance of wild crimson rosellas occurring in New Zealand is a better-known population that arose in Wellington in the early 1960s, but was gone before the late 1990s (in the 1999-2004 survey of the bird distribution of New Zealand, only two crimson rosellas were recorded; neither of which were near where the Wellington birds were). Whether they ceased to exist by hybridising with eastern rosellas or simply dying out is difficult to determine.

Eastern rosellas certainly would have existed where crimson rosellas did while the Wellington population still existed, but I have found nothing in regards to whether the two species were seen interacting, or whether any hybrids were seen. Again, DNA testing could help determine whether or not Wellington's eastern rosellas carry crimson rosella blood.

Another possibility is that crimson rosellas ceased to exist in Wellington via being trapped and sold as aviary birds; after all, some Australians consider the crimson rosella to be their most beautiful-looking native parrot.

I would love if a new population could form somewhere as a result of some of them escaping from captivity, but I doubt that any other NZ birders would, and the DoC and/or MPI would probably want them gone ASAP.