The earthquake earlier this month caused the seabed to raise up around Kaikoura and exposed a lot of paua which is likely to kill them. There’s been quite a bit of controversy over volunteer efforts to save the paua and return them to the sea – over 300 volunteers showed up to help but the…
We were driving down the road a few weeks ago and got behind a semi with a sign for a fund raising event for a local school. Not your ordinary fundraiser though – a pig hunt. That’s certainly not a sign you see often where I come from!
On Taiaroa Head, just East of Dunedin, sits the world’s only mainland breeding colony of the Royal Albatross – the largest of all the albatross with a wing span that exceeds 9 feet (3 meters) and weighing in at about 20 pounds (9 kilograms)! Fourteen varieties of Albatross breed in the New Zelaand region, more…
Wikipedia says there is a Maori legend about the sandfly: “The god Tu-te-raki-whanoa had just finished creating the landscape of Fiordland, it was absolutely stunning… so stunning that it stopped people from working. They just stood around gazing at the beauty instead. The goddess Hinenuitepo became angry at these unproductive people, so she created the sandfly…
The year before I moved to New Zealand, we spent Christmas with my family in Texas. We drove through the world’s greatest outdoor Christmas light display at the Belton Lake Outdoor Recreation Area as my family does every year. Part of this fantastic light display is a section focused on all of the scenes of…
In one of my first posts I commented on the high number of birds that are endemic to New Zealand. Insects have an even higher endemic percentage with more than 90% of insects found in New Zealand being endemic. For every type of land bird in the country, there are more than 200 kinds of…
I read an article from Lonely Planet a few years ago about the top 10 marine encounters in the world. Two of them are in New Zealand and three are in Australia.
The first time I visited New Zealand, we drove through Otorohanga and stopped at the Kiwi House there. The Kiwi House helps with breeding and conservation of New Zealand’s ‘unique and endangered animals’ including of course the kiwi. It’s not a huge place, but for a $24 fee you can visit the kiwis themselves and…
I mentioned a month or so ago that we were seeing a lot of pregnant sheep as it was getting close to lambing season. And now the time is here! Driving around New Zealand this time of year is a treat because the paddocks are full lambs of various shapes and sizes – some lazing…
One of my coworkers has three hens and they produce a couple of eggs a day on average. He and his wife can’t eat them all so he brings the overflow to work. And they sit in a carton on the table by his desk, completely ambivalent to the presence of a refrigerator or not.