The red bit on the pukeko’s forehead is called its frontal shield. The frontal shield on chicks is black and turns red when the chick is about three months old.
Golden Bay
Pukeko (Porphyrio melanotus) chicks leave the nest after just a few days and spend a couple of months being fed by adults who aren’t necessarily their parents. If there’s more than one female pukeko around, everyone will lay their eggs in one nest and the group’s males will take care of most of the incubation. [...]
This pukeko (Porphyrio melanotus) chick was one of a family roaming the campground at Totaranui. It really is mostly feet, which it will eventually grow into. Kind of. Let’s face, even adult pukeko have pretty large feet relative to their body size.
This pukeko (Porphyrio melanotus) was grazing the grass in the camp at Totaranui, no doubt keeping an eye out for some human to take their own eyes off their camp so it can conduct a raid. Pukeko are as bad as wekas at getting into your gear when you’re camping. The pukeko’s large feet are [...]
The end of February is often regarded as the end of summer in New Zealand, so today’s pic is a weka running on the summer-dry grass of a Golden Bay campground, because no summer camping holiday is complete without a weka. The subspecies found in the Tasman District is the western weka (Gallirallus australis australis), [...]
The name matuku moana most often refers to the white-faced heron, Ardea novaehollandiae, which are common on paddocks and coastlines around the country. The reef heron, Egretta sacra, is less common but is also referred to as matuku moana. The reef heron is found in tropical parts of eastern Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands. [...]
Tidal environments are beautiful, transient landscapes, changing at every tide. This is the inlet side of Totara Avenue, near Pakawau, near high tide, and the short, clumpy sea rushes that dominate the inlet are common around the Tasman coast. They’re more likely to occur in what are called low-energy environments, where the incoming tide is weak [...]
Just about ten minutes north of Collingwood, past Ruataniwha Inlet, the road to Farewell Spit runs alongside this little estuary/inlet thing that seems to have no name. Totara Avenue runs down the spit, and houses on one side have a beach outlook, while houses on the other side look out over the inlet towards the [...]
This natural arch is found at -40.498591, 172.695851, just east of Wharariki Beach at the top of the South Island. These cliffs are quartz sandstone, and wind and wave action on the cliffs produce the fine quartz sand that comprises the sand dunes of Farewell Spit. Wikipedia says these cliffs are Cretaceous quartz sandstone structures, while GNS’s ‘Geology [...]
This is the headland at Cape Farewell and the view is out into the Tasman Sea. Past these cliffs, Farewell Spit stretches east for around 30 kilometres, separating Golden Bay from the Tasman Sea. The cliffs are made of quartz sandstones and erosion of them contributes to Farewell Spit’s ongoing growth. But the main contributor [...]
