Although riflemen are sexually dimorphic, both the male and the female have this pearly-white chest and belly, along with these grandad eyebrows. Young birds are more mottled on their chests, and the pearly chest and white brow seem to come in as the birds mature. Both male and female have the yellow sweat stains under [...]
Kahurangi National Park
New Zealand’s smallest bird, the rifleman (Acanthisitta chloris), feeds exclusively on insects. They browse native forests, going up and down trees, systematically hunting down their tiny prey. This rifleman on the track to Mt Arthur Hut has taken an interest in what’s inhabiting the mosses and lichens on the underside of a branch (probably a [...]
To overseas visitors used to snowfall in deciduous forests, it might seem odd to see snow on and around trees that haven’t lost their leaves. New Zealand’s southern beech (Nothofagus) species are evergreen, so this is what our forests look like when it snows. This photo was taken on the track up to the Arthur [...]
When Europeans started looking at weka closely, they were confused over how many species there were. There was also thought to be an extinct species of little weka, known only from sub-fossils, but these days that species is thought to have been a variant of the ones we still have. The four subspecies vary in [...]
The Cobb Valley track runs alongside the Cobb River, and this is the view in the lower part of the valley, walking out towards the Trilobite Hut carpark. The valley floor is covered in tussock, these knee-height grasses growing in clumps that you can see in the foreground. From a distance, tussock give the landscape [...]
Yesterday’s photo was of two weka (Gallirallus australis) chasing each other and is a blur of feathers where it’s a bit difficult to tell which end of the birds we’re looking at. Today’s is a proper photo of a weka close-up. The subspecies of weka that is found in the Tasman District is the western [...]
Okay, this isn’t a great photo, but it illustrates something I find really amusing about weka (Gallirallus australis). Weka don’t mind you getting near them, what they won’t tolerate is others of their kind getting close. If another starts closing in, one will start clucking, slowly at first, and becoming increasingly insistent as the intruder [...]
This is the view from the eastern slopes of Xenicus Peak looking down on Lake Cobb. This tiny lake is the source of the Cobb River, which flows into the Cobb Reservoir, providing water to the Cobb power station at the junction of the Cobb River and the Takaka River. Who was this Cobb who [...]
This imposing beast is Xenicus Peak in the Cobb Valley. Xenicus is a genus of very small birds, containing only two species. The first is the New Zealand rock wren (Xenicus gilviventris), which is now extremely rare. It occurs in a lot of different parts of the South Island, but there aren’t very many of [...]
We’ve had such a warm spell here in Motueka that it seemed like Mt Arthur would lose all the snow that had accumulated on it since the middle of May. But the poor weather at the start of the week saw the return of the snowy coat, and this is what it was looking like [...]
