New Zealand Swans
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The Diet of Swans & Feeding Swans
The New Zealand Swan (Cygnus atratus sumnerensis) is an extinct swan from the Chatham Islands and the South Island of New Zealand. It was originally described as a separate species from the Black Swan based on the slightly larger size of the fossil bones found and the apparent absence of the Black Swan from New Zealand prior to 1864. More recent analysis of these fossils, and others, suggests that the New Zealand Swan was a subspecies of the Black Swan, and it is referred to this way in ornithology today. The swan remains found in the Chatham Islands may constitute a separate species, C. chathamicus (Oliver, 1955 - C. chathamensis is an unjustified emendation), but more work is needed to establish this.
The Australian form was introduced to New Zealand and the Chatham Islands in 1864 and 1890, respectively. They have effortlessly filled the ecological niche of their extinct relative(s) and multiplied, today numbering in the tens of thousands.
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