The Te Papa-hosted website New Zealand Birds Online has passed a significant milestone, with the 8000th image loaded late on 29 March.
Most of the images on the website have been sourced from amateur or semi-professional photographers, who have generously supported the project from the outset. At the time of the launch in June 2013, the website held an archive of 6592 images supplied by 254 different photographers, most of whom were members of Birds New Zealand. Once the site was live, it attracted the attention of a much wider pool of photographers, and we now have images supplied by 335 different people.
The 8000th image was loaded by Southland-based photographer Glenda Rees, and was of a southern black-backed gull nest photographed at Awarua Bay in January this year. Glenda has contributed 169 images to the website, including the master images for southern brown kiwi, swamp harrier, bar-tailed godwit, ruddy turnstone, black stilt, fairy tern, yellowhead and brown creeper. She was also the first photographer featured in our ‘meet the photographers’ blog series in late 2013.
There have been some wonderful images loaded on the website in the last couple of days, including new master images for southern brown kiwi (by Glenda Rees), buff-breasted sandpiper (by Ian Southey), and pomarine skua (by Les Feasey).
Thank you to all of our photographers for their ongoing support, and for continuing to load or send in their images. The image archive is one of the real strengths of New Zealand Birds Online, and it is fantastic to see the archive continuing to grow in quality and diversity, as well as the impressive quantity.
Related blogs
New Zealand Birds Online – a few of my favourite things: Part 1
New Zealand Birds Online – a few of my favourite things: Part 2
Meet the photographers of NZ Birds Online series
A new bird for New Zealand – buff-breasted sandpiper
is there a service at Te Papa, where one can research detailed measurements of NZ Birds for wood carving purposes e.g, Beak , eye, head, waist, Leg, feet size’s, I know a lot of books may have Body lengths and may have wing length, but its the finer details I would like to research to be more true to form or may be where I could find this info, thank you Regards Ken.
Check out this article and picture of Fantails snuggled together in Dunedin. ‘Found’ on the Guardian website, originally from the Otago Daily Times. Small world.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2015/jun/02/the-cold-that-binds-tiny-birds-huddle-for-warmth