1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait, Little Spotted Kiwi, Silver Proof

The Little Spotted Kiwi — Apteryx owenii — was by 2004 functionally extinct on the New Zealand mainland, surviving only on Kapiti Island and a handful of managed offshore sanctuaries following eradication campaigns against introduced predators. The species had been gone from the main islands for decades by the time this coin was struck, which gives the issue a quietly elegiac character that the mintage figures alone don't convey.