BLACK STILT Himantopus novaezelandiae CR

Himantopus novae-zelandiae Gould, 1841

MZUT AV6940; previously mounted; adult male; New Zealand, no date; from O. Finsch, in 1869.

Remarks.—Otto Finsch (1839–1917), the German ethnographer, naturalist and explorer, was curator or director of natural history museums in Leiden (the Netherlands) and Bremen (Germany) (Mearns & Mearns 1998). Finsch visited New Zealand only in 1881 and 1885, but he exchanged specimens with J. Haast in 1860; therefore, this specimen was not collected by Finsch himself, but probably came from one of these exchanges (P. Scofield pers. comm.).