I wouldn’t say this is necessarily my favourite bird photo but I’ll never forget the day I took it. I was on seabird sightseeing trip off Kaikoura, one of the best places in New Zealand to get close to the albatrosses, petrels and other seabirds usually inaccessible to landlubbers like...
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By Ellen Ozarka (Forest & Bird coms intern) “Where’s the track?” I thought to myself as we reached the end of the beach. My presumptive question was answered when I looked up to see Graeme scaling the grassy slope which appeared to loom over my head. There was no track,...
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By David Brooks Bigger and better than ever, our Bird of the Year contest had it all in 2019. Relentless mockery between campaign teams, a neck-and-neck race to the finish line between two flightless treasures and priceless publicity for our native birds and the threats they face. Nearly 43,500 New...
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By Rose Davis, r.davis@forestandbird.org.nz A dolphin gazes straight into my eyes and it’s like getting a rare glimpse of pure love. I’m under the sea wearing a mask and snorkel, turning in circles as a pod of about eight huge, gentle bottlenose dolphins swims around me in a Waiheke Island...
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New Zealand’s longest-running conservation magazine has just been added to the National Library’s Papers Past website. The first two decades of Forest & Bird’s nearly 100-year-old magazine are now available online, spanning the period before the Great Depression to the end of World War II (1924-1945). These magazines document the...
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Pūteketeke – Australasian Crested Grebe - Podiceps cristatus Native, Nationally vulnerable I was only two-years-old when my parents bought an old ‘smoko hut’ from the Geraldine Linen Flax Mill and transported it to Te Puna a Taka (Lake Clearwater) – part of the Ō Tū Wharekai wetland system in the...
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A recent video clip of a stoat sussing out how to get onto the top of a picnic table where a kārearea (New Zealand falcon) was standing at Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, sent shivers up my spine, no fear of the big bird on the stoat’s part. This was followed by a...
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Auckland Council is currently consulting on the future reopening of tracks in the Waitākere Ranges, which were closed to stop the spread of kauri dieback disease. Forest & Bird believes that if council focuses on building high quality tracks which stop the movement of any soil, and that they only...
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Many people shudder at the thought of bats. Who’s to blame for this misconception? Was it Bram Stoker who wrote the classic tale of Count Dracula in 1897, or was it the film industry that subsequently embellished the story of the supernatural, blood-drooling vampires? In contrast the two remaining New...
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