1Dec 17, 2014
Seabird of the Year (with chick): David Hallett Working in conservation is invariably busy. New Zealand’s natural heritage is under such consistent attack on so many fronts that there’s never time to put our feet up. So much so that sometimes it’s hard to see the wood … you know the rest of it. So […]
2Nov 27, 2014
After a weekend doing ground-based pest control, I can better appreciate the value of aerial 1080. I slid down a muddy bank with nothing to grab but a soggy tree fern stump that lifted from the soil like a mushroom. Through the rain and the supplejack lassoes I could see Ian and Merryl a few […]
3Nov 26, 2014
The fairy tern was the winner of Forest & Bird’s inaugural Seabird of the Year poll. One of the campaign managers for the fairy tern, Wade Doak, writes with his wife Jan about the day he saw two fairy tern taking advantage of the short distance between the west and east coasts of the North […]
4Nov 20, 2014
A new black-billed gull/tarapunga colony has been discovered; it’s great news but because these gulls are so rare, we can’t just leave them to the mercy of predators. The campaign manager for the black-billed gull/tarapunga, Steve Attwood, gives us this update. THREATENED SPECIES GET TOGETHER DOWN AT THE RIVER Braided river birds are getting it […]
5Nov 13, 2014
In late October a trio of Wellingtonians went on a three-day inspiration expedition to the Hūnua Ranges south-east of Auckland. The Hūnua Ranges — a key water catchment for Auckland — had been in the news due to the confirmation of an upcoming 1080 drop in the ranges. The reason? To suppress introduced predators like rats and possums […]
6Nov 6, 2014
Albatrosses are one of the most inspiring of marine creatures, gliding effortlessly on huge broad wings across the oceans. They have the longest wingspan of any bird. Perhaps we humans envy them, just a bit, for their apparent freedom to fly across the oceans anywhere that takes their fancy, only returning to land every two […]
7Oct 24, 2014
Cobb Valley, Golden Bay. Photo: Craig Potton. Short meetings beat long ones. I’m probably not alone in thinking that. So the thought of a three day meeting would normally leave me cold. But having just returned from one of Forest & Bird’s “Island Gatherings”, I can say there are exceptions. The gatherings aren’t the usual […]
8Sep 2, 2014
Last year, Forest & Bird member Emma Cronin received funding to deliver her Black Petrel Education Project to schools across New Zealand and further afield. Like many of our seabirds, the Black Petrel, or Petrel Negro – sensibly – spends the winter in warmer climes, in this case Peru and Ecuador, before returning to NZ […]
9Aug 15, 2014
Amidst the menagerie of animals in the toy basket at Newtown Kindergarten my youngest daughter Sylvie (4) formed an attachment to a little blue penguin (aka korora). It’s one of those stuffed native birds whose tummy you depress and it makes the bird’s call: a kind of Tickle Me Elmo for wannabe twitchers. Sylvie’s teacher […]