Golden Bay’s mild climate, native bush and numerous golden sand beaches make the Abel Tasman coast track popular throughout the year. The Abel Tasman National Park is New Zealand’s smallest national park and is named after Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, who was the first European explorer known to sight New Zealand. The park was established [...]
Places
The South Island’s beech forests (Nothofagus species) play host to a species of aphid-like scale insects. These scale insects attach themselves to trees and suck up sugar from the tree’s vascular tissues. The fluid ingested is so rich in sugar that the scale insects secrete it, providing a high-energy food source to other forest life, including tui, [...]
White-faced herons (Egretta novaehollandiae) are common in the Tasman region. They’ve arrived in New Zealand in the last hundred years and like it here so much that they’ve spread throughout the country. Coastlines are their thing, especially mudflats, where they systematically scour the shore for signs of dinner. They eat invertebrates (crabs, worms, insects, spiders), [...]
Abel Tasman Drive connects Takaka and Totaranui Beach in the Abel Tasman National Park. Along the way, it passes through popular coastal settlements, including Pohara, Tarakohe and Tata Beach. This is the marina at Port Tarakohe.
Just up the coast from Kaiteriteri is Split Apple Rock, a huge granite boulder that has split in two. The rock is thought to have split when water seeped into a crack, then froze and expanded.
New Zealand fur seals/kekeno (Arctocephalus forsteri) were nearly extinct before the Marine Mammals Protection Act was passed in 1978. Before humans arrived, it’s estimated there were as many as two million seals on New Zealand’s coastlines. Hunting for food and furs was the issue. Although hunting stopped in the late 1940s, the population didn’t really start [...]
This South Island robin (Petroica australis) was checking us out along a track at Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson Lakes National Park. Although quiet, these guys aren’t shy. They will come very close to you to check out what deliciousness your footsteps are stirring up.
The tangled hump of vines is old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba), and anyone who was watching New Zealand television in the late-1980s will remember David Bellamy’s “Old man’s beard must go!” ad. Old man’s beard grows vigorously, strangles its host plant, shades out other plants and stops the seeds of other species from germinating: Bad [...]
This is Amanita muscaria, fly agaric. There’s some discussion about whether Amanita muscaria is just one species or many, as specimens can look very different. See Fungi of Nelson Lakes: Episode III: Fly Agaric for a cluster of fly agaric that looks not much like this one at all.
After Tuesday’s cold snap blew through, we woke Wednesday morning to the Wharepapa/Arthur Range looking like this. The pyramid-looking mountain in the foreground that doesn’t have snow on it is Sugar Loaf. Sugar Loaf is 1081 metres high and lies between the Pearse and Graham Rivers, which feed the Motueka River. Mountains called “sugar loaf” are named [...]
