New Zealand does have some great freaking birds! Unfortunately many of them are incredibly rare so most casual visitors (non-birders of course) really only see European imports and the commonest of natives.
Asking how many endemics there are here is a bit of a loaded question because of splitters (eg the latest checklist splits North and South Island robin into two species, North and South Island saddleback into two species, etc) and also we have many subantarctic islands in our territory. If I only include the main islands (New Zealand proper, if you like) and disregard petrels and albatrosses (but do include inshore seabirds such as shags and black-billed gull, freshwater birds and mainland waders such as black stilt and wrybill, and waterfowl) then there are around forty or forty-five endemics. There's about seven I haven't seen yet, mainly because those ones are either very difficult or just in out-of-the-way places.
