This is the female chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs gengleri). She’s not as obvious as the rust-coloured male, and it’s easy to mistake her for a sparrow. Female chaffinches are a little bit smaller than sparrows, though, and have that grey swoop behind the ears that the male has. Another not-a-sparrow giveaway is the white on the [...]
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One of the signs of spring coming is these guys brightening up. The male chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs gengleri) is always this rusty colour with the grey hood, but in spring the rusty colour gets really intense. Chaffinches are native to Europe and North Africa and were introduced to New Zealand in the late 1800s.
Mosses and liverworts feature among the many small plants of the beech forest on Mt Arthur. Growing on the forest floor and on trees as they do, they break down dead material, collect water and provide habitats for insects, which is, of course, of intense interest to the insect-eating rifleman.
One of the things I love about the beech forest on Mt Arthur is the abundance of small plants on the forest floor. One of the many different mosses found on the mountain is this haircap moss, of the genus Polytrichum. It forms beds that look like tiny plantations of pine trees reaching for the [...]
This Dr Seuss tree (official name: mountain neinei, scientific name: Dracophyllum traversii) has tangled, twisted branches, as though its unsure just what direction it should grow in. The wild-haired clusters of leaves terminating each branch are typical of the mountain neinei, and the small cluster lower down on the tree has quite reddish leaves, which [...]
On the walk up to the Mt Arthur hut, the track goes along a ridge. Here the beech trees mix with mountain neinei trees; there’s a large mountain neinei on the right-hand side of the track in the photo. Dracophyllum traversii is also called the pineapple tree. My first thought on seeing them was “Dr [...]
This photo was taken from the track going from the Flora carpark to the Mt Arthur hut. The forest on the slopes of Mt Arthur is classic New Zealand beech forest. Southern beech species (family Nothofagaceae) do well in cool, low fertility environments like Mt Arthur. Beech trees don’t flower every year, but occasionally there’s [...]
The best-known Māori name of the rifleman (Acanthisitta chloris) is titipounamu. The titi probably refers to its squeaky, high-pitched call and the pounamu to the green colouring of the males. You can see this striking colouring if you look closely at this photo, as the tiny bird’s back and head pretty closely match the colour [...]
The female rifleman (Acanthisitta chloris) is slightly larger than the male, weighing in at a whopping 7 grams, versus his 6. Females also have different colouring than the males, lacking the green back and shoulders. The female is more brown and speckled, though she has the same pearly-white chest and belly, the white eye stripe [...]
When I was going through the photos from this trip up to the Mt Arthur hut, my brain struggled to make sense of this one. Yes, it is actually the right way up, as you can see from the ones I posted Monday and Tuesday, which immediately precede this one. When you weigh just 6 grams, does [...]
