• What adaptations does a tui have?
• What's in a name?
• Where do tui live?

Adaptations are special features of a plant or animal that help it survive in its environment. Adaptations might help in finding food, getting a mate, beating competitors or escaping predators.

Some adaptations are easy to see. For example, birds have different feet and beaks depending on where they live and what they eat. Other adaptations are harder to see. Animals also have special organs and body functions that help them survive.

Some plants and animals live in very strange or difficult places and they need extra special adaptations to survive there. For example, some animals can survive in very cold places by having furry coats or thick layers of fat for insulation. Some bacteria can live in the hottest places on Earth, cracks in the bottom of the deep oceans, because they have a special covering that protects them from the heat.

What adaptations might help a plant or animal avoid being eaten? Plants sometimes have special chemicals that make their leaves taste bad. Animals might need a good sense of smell, eyesight or hearing to sense predators before they attack.

Adaptations can only develop over a long, long time. This means that any quick change in the environment might cause problems for many creatures if they can't adapt swiftly enough. Stoats and cats were introduced into New Zealand within the last 100 years and still our native birds have not had time to adapt to these predators.

What adaptations does a tui have? top

Just like all other birds, tui have some adaptations that enable them to fly. All birds have hollow bones and no teeth, which make them light, and strong chest muscles that help them flap their wings. They also have feathers, which are light and designed to help keep the bird in the air.

Feathers also help to keep birds warm. Special fluffy feathers called down cover the chicks for warmth. Birds replace their feathers at least once a year in a process called moulting. The barbs on the wing feathers are held together by tiny hooks that sometimes get separated. Birds run their bill down the feathers to join the hooks back together.

A tui wing feather (click for enlargement)

This is a wing feather of a tui with a magnified portion showing how the barbs interlock (click for enlargement).

Body feather of a tui (click for enlargement)

This is a body feather of a tui with a magnified portion showing how the barbs at the base of the feather do not interlock.

Many tui sitting on a branch (click for enlargement)

Like other perching birds, tui have four toes - three that point forward and one stronger one that points backward. When the tui sits on a branch, its rear toe clasps around the branch from the back so that it won't fall off when it is asleep.

Tui opening a mistletoe flower (click for enlargement)

Tui also have adaptations to help them feed. This video (500Kb mpg movie) shows a tui opening a mistletoe flower.

Tui (click for enlargement)

Tui have a curved beak to reach into long flowers.

The brush like tongue of a tui (click for enlargement)

Tui have a long brush-like tongue help them drink nectar, and their large intestine helps to digest fruit.

What's in a name? top

Scientists call tui by the name Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae. What a long and complicated name! Why can't we just call them tui? The problem with common names like tui is that people in different places often call two totally different species by the same name, just like different people can have the same name. Prosthemadera is from the Greek "prosthema" which means an appendage (or addition) plus "dere" which means a neck.  This refers to the curled and filamentous plumes about the neck. Novaeseelandiae refers to the place that the bird with the curled and filamentous plumes about the neck lives!

Sometimes people also call the same animal by different names. For example, how do we know that the kereru is the same animal as what other people call a wood pigeon? And a New Zealand wood pigeon is a completely different animal from a North American pigeon! Koko and the parsonbird are other names that people use for the tui.

To stop all of this confusion, scientists have come up with a special naming system for all living creatures. Every creature is given its own scientific name that has two parts: a first name called the "genus" and a last name called the "species". Every type of organism is given a different scientific name that is used by all scientists around the world. This means that scientists can be sure that they are all talking about the same organism. Humans have a scientific name too. We are called Homo sapiens.

Where do tui live? top

Tui are endemic to New Zealand which means that they do not live in any other place in the world. Tui live on the North and South Islands, Stewart Island and the Chatham Islands. Tui are fairly common in most parts of New Zealand, except in eastern parts of the South Island, where they can be hard to find.

Tui mostly live in native forest, where the diverse plants provide them with lots of food, places to build nests, and protection from bad weather. However, since humans have now destroyed lots of their forest homes, many tui now live in different habitats, maybe even in your garden!  

Tui move around a lot, since they often fly long distances when they are searching for food. Some tui can travel up to 30 kilometres in one day!