The New Zealand falcon (kārearea) has finally soared to success as Bird of the Year in Forest & Bird’s eighth annual poll but what makes this bird such an admired and respected high flyer? “My bird, by power of charm arising, in the glance of an eye, like the sparrowhawk, by this charm shall my […]

The rock wren – it wakes up to “100% Pure” views (for now), it has some serious eyebrows and it hops to the beat of its own drum. Vote rock wren for bird of the year 2012. Rugged The (petite) Edmund Hillary of the bird world, the rock wren is our only true alpine bird. […]

A bedraggled-looking possum floating on a log near Kapiti Island has hit the headlines recently. In a situation reminiscent of Robert Hewitt’s epic survival tale, where the keen ex-navy diver floated in the Kapiti currents for four days and three nights until being found by his navy friends off Mana Island, a possum floating on […]

Australia’s Land for Wildlife (LFW) program has grown to include over 15,000 landowners wanting to restore wild-life areas, and I recently got a chance to travel there in the hope of re-creating a similar scheme here. The program was started in 1981 by two determined birders – Ellen McCulloch and Reg Johnson – who wanted […]

“A large land, uplifted high” is how, in December 1642, the Dutch led by Abel Tasman first described what was to become known as New Zealand. They were looking upon the western side of the Southern Alps which rise precipitously from a narrow coast to top at 4068m (12,349 feet) above sea level. Of course, […]

 I recently returned from a trip to plant trees on one of our most windswept and distant archipelagos – the Chatham Islands.   The two week Department of Conservation trip begun with a car-ride around the main island which has been stripped of most of it trees, seeded with grassed and populated with cattle and […]

I am fifty three years old and for 3 generations our family has farmed cows on the same farm. Twenty years ago intensification began replacing traditional farming methods and farmers, like myself, were caught up in this drive to reap more milk. I call it the ‘moron theory’ – we’re morons the more we put […]

For the past four months or so, I have spent much of my time watching the watchful karearea (New Zealand Falcon – Falco novaeseelandiae). Stillness and patience allowed me to observe their progress through aerial courtship displays, mating, nest finding, laying, incubating, hatching, brooding and feeding, to finally fledging a chick. Ironically, after all that […]

Although a National government has been returned, in a way Kiwis did “vote for nature” as our election campaign asked. The prospects for Nature in the next three years are not all quite as bleak as you might imagine. It is a very interesting Parliament and there are some reasons to hope that Forest & […]