This fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa fuliginosa) hiding behind the fern was a little bit reluctant about having its photo taken. This was taken on a misty morning up the Riwaka Valley Road, on the track to the Riuwaka Resurgence. It was one of two fantails flitting near the track, always behind something, too focused on bug-catching [...]
Places
This tarn is just a ten minute walk from Fenella Hut in the Cobb Valley. The beech trees growing alongside the tarn are rather scrubby, attesting to how hard life can be in the subalpine zone.
The tuft of white feathers on a tui’s throat is called a poi, and this one is giving his poi a good shake belting out its song. Tui are nectar and seed eaters and so are important in the propagation of many New Zealand native plants.
From the Flora carpark at the end of Graham Valley Road, you can walk up the Flora Saddle, then down to the Flora Hut. The hut is divided into two bunk rooms with a fireplace servicing each room and the woodshed in between. It was originally built in 1928 and was refurbished in 2016.
The South Island robin (Petroica australis australis) is a worm eating machine. It’s also a worm caching machine: robins are known to cache their food (and to steal from one another’s caches). Experiments conducted by Victoria University biologists suggest that these robins can also count. A video on YouTube shows an experiment carried out where [...]
Wingspan-wise, the Caspian tern (Hydroprogne caspia) is around the same size as the black-backed gull. The Caspian tern is not only New Zealand’s largest tern species, it is also the world’s largest tern species. The black cap and black legs are typical of adults, although the black cap will fade to grey outside of the [...]
It’s the start of August, which means that a month from now, spring! will be here. And somewhere around the second week of spring, eastern bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica baueri) start arriving in Motueka, after travelling from their western Alaska breeding grounds. During that entire trip, they don’t stop. At all. For six to eight [...]
Young riflemen (Acanthisitta chloris) don’t have the creamy white chest of the adults. Their colours are quite variable, and this one has a white collar that might be the start of the white chest.
This is the outlet from the Kaiteriteri Inlet at low tide. The exposed rocks are covered in little black mussels (Xenostrobus neozelanicus), shut up tight, waiting for the next high tide so they can start sucking plankton from the water once again.
This little owl (Athene noctua) could be a fledgling. Its chest feathers are pretty fuzzy and it doesn’t have the spots on the top of its head that the one I posted a few months ago does. Little owls breed from October to January and this photo was taken late last summer, at Marchwood Park in [...]
