Watercolour Painting by Avril Jean - South Island Kokako

Original watercolour bird study by Avril Jean.

Mounted and framed in a New Zealand made wooden frame.

Frame size 40 x 39 cm 
Mount outer size: 32.5 x 31.5 cm
Mount window size 18.5 x 16.5 cm

About the South Island Kokako:

South Island kokako were slightly smaller and darker than the North Island kokako, with orange rather than blue facial wattles. In the early 1800s, they occupied beech forests and low scrub above the tree line on both sides of Southern Alps from north-west Nelson south to Fiordland, and mixed podocarp forest on Stewart Island, plus some forested areas of Otago and Southland. They declined markedly after introductions of cats, ship rats and stoats, and were very rare by the late 1800s. The range of the South Island kokako shrank to Fiordland and Stewart Island, with the last accepted twentieth century sighting at Mt Aspiring National Park in 1967. Declared extinct by the Department of Conservation in 2008, the species' conservation status was moved from extinct to data deficient in 2013, leading to acceptance of a sighting from near Reefton on the West Coast of the South Island in 2007.