Interesting/Little Known introduced populations

The Arnhem chimp colony is at Arnhem zoo, not Apenheul. Its a typical zoo colony but one of the earliest to include a large number including several males and living in a large naturalised enclosure. To my knowledge Apenheul have never(?) held Common Chimpanzee, only Bonobos.

 

I think Van Hooff's were/are the owners of Arnhem... Its also the subject of Franz de Waal's primate study 'Chimpanzee Politics' which details the setting up of the colony and some of the complex behaviours he observed. I've seen the enclosure although a long time ago now- the outdoors is/was a large wooded island with a number of mature trees, and surrounded by a moat. I didn't see the indoors but believe it is (or used to be) a couple of large indoor 'halls' plus individual bedroom cages. Because of the climate the chimps are largely, or totally kept indoors during the winter months and only given access to the semi-natural enclosure in the better summer months. So 'semi-captive' as used in the scientific literature, isn't a very good description.

 

There are other examples of this, such as the Eurasian Collared-Dove spreading north in Europe and the northward march of Great-tailed Grackle in the US. The Great-tailed Grackle is one I've seen personally, 20 years ago they were virtually unknown in my area, now they're increasingly common with every year and potentially even breeding now.

 

There are exemples of species expansion everywhere, one of the most well-known cases of recent one has to be the Cattle egrets crossing a whole ocean to get to the Americas!

Here, Laughing dove (now very common everywhere in Morocco but in the north) started spreading north and so did Namaqua dove, Golden nightjar, Black-crowned sparrow-lark, Sudan golden sparrow etc... almost all had no or few records in Morocco before their recent expansion (most still considered very rare species if not vagrants but some breeding like the first WP breeding of Golden nightjar)

 

The Black-shouldered Lapwing colonised New Zealand under its own power, but it became so widely disliked here to the point that it is no longer protected, and many people claim that it is an introduced species. Including people who love all other native species and pretend to be New Zealand bird aficionados.
Also, the Paradise Shelduck was technically introduced from the South Island to the North Island, though presumably many Paradise Shelducks have colonised the North Island from the South Island on their own since then.

 

What makes them so disliked? I have a few guesses knowing other Vanellus species...

 

In Tim Low's 'Feral Future', he describes the Asian Elephant as being the, 'world's largest feral animal'. He claims that there were genuinely feral elephants on the Andaman Islands at one stage, but I don't think that that is correct. The last elephant on the islands; a free-roaming bull named Rajan, died in 2016, and he was born on the Indian mainland.

 

Noise, harassing other native species, etc.
This page explains the topic better than I can:
Spur-winged plover | New Zealand Birds Online

 

Ah, the Masked Lapwing. Didn't recognize the previous names. Yes, the website lists quite a few good reasons to dislike them in NZ!

 

"Spur-winged plover" was their "old" name in Australia up to I guess the early 1980's when a number of potentially confusing and incorrect common names were "tidied up". Their spurs were the reason that as a child I would wander around on my holidays at Phillip Island with a stick over my shoulder to ward off this potentially dangerous bird. While their swooping was unnerving I never met anybody who was actually hit by one of them.

 

In South Africa, the Common Chaffinch is very local and probably only breeds on the Cape Peninsula. Also in South Africa, the Chukar Partridge is found on Robben Island, and Robben Island may also still have Indian Peafowl, but there have been no peafowl records from the island submitted to eBird in almost two years. It is/was the only South African peafowl population considered to be truly feral.

 

I call them masked lapwings. And also your right they are completely over Phillip island in all seasons. Also see them a lot in the outer suburbs of Melbourne.

 

Masked Lapwing is the official name per HBW, but Spur-winged Plover makes sense. Sounds like they can be pretty scary sometimes swooping with those wing spurs. Most Vanellus have a wing spur I believe; I'd always heard Vanellus spinosus as Spur-winged Lapwing though.

 

Has the eradication of 'Red' and Green Junglefowl from the Cocos (Keeling) Islands started yet?

 

The Superb Lyrebird was introduced to Tasmania out of the fear that foxes would eat them to extinction on the mainland. Although foxes most certainly are a cancer on Australia's indigenous fauna, the predicted lyrebird slaughter did not happen. The Superb Lyrebird is not wanted in Tasmania, and according to Tim Low's 'Where Song Began', a plant species that is endemic to Tasmania has been reduced to a single location, as a result of the lyrebird's destructive foraging.

 

Spur-winged Plover is how I know them too. The first bird I ever saw in Australia/Tasmania apart from crows etc. I can still remember that penetrating, grating call. I can imagine hearing it all the time might render them unpopular...