Mohouidae Whiteheads

These energetic small songbirds flit about forest and scrub habitats, usually in groups and sometimes hanging upside down, in search of insect prey. Only recent molecular analyses have revealed how distinctive and ancient their ancestry is. Like so many birds in the region, two of the three species are cooperative breeders. Endemics to New Zealand, the mohouids have long contended with being the sole hosts of an endemic brood-parasitic cuckoo, but it is anthropogenic changes, including the clearing of land and depredations of introduced stoats and rats, that have caused dramatic declines in their populations and constrictions of their ranges.