From welcome swallows to Australian magpies, bird expert Colin Miskelly looks at the variety of birdlife who’ve come to call Coromandel home over the past half-century. Spending the summer at the beach is part of the great New Zealand holiday tradition. For many families, attachment to a particular location resultsRead more
When did you last get excited about finding a weevil? They get a lot of bad press as pests of crops and stored food, but finding two rare weevil species was one of the highlights of a recent Te Papa expedition to Dusky Sound in Fiordland.Read more
Have you ever wondered which New Zealand bird was the first to be given a published scientific name? The unlikely answer is the broad-billed prion, named as ‘Procellaria vittata’ by a 22-year-old Georg Forster in 1777.Read more
A team of Te Papa scientists recently visited Dusky Sound as the first stage in an investigation of changes in biodiversity since Cook’s visit in 1773. Read more
Cuckoos are well-known for eating spiky and poisonous foods, but did you know they can eat toxic monarch caterpillars?Read more
Taumaka is a 20-hectare Māori-owned island lying about 4 km off the South Westland coast. Colin Miskelly describes the wildlife he encountered there on his latest visit. Read more
See fur seal pups, prions, little penguins, and Fiordland crested penguins caught on camera through a burrowscope lens on Taumaka (Open Bay Islands).Read more
Taumaka is a 20 ha Māori-owned island lying off the South Westland coast. Administered by the Taumaka me Popotai Trust, the island is well-known as a breeding site for kekeno / New Zealand fur seals and tawaki / Fiordland crested penguins. Both species were studied on the island by studentsRead more
Finding a new bird species for their country of residence is the holy grail for many birdwatchers. Over the last decade, new species have been detected in New Zealand at an average rate of one every 15 months. The finding of two new bird species within 2 days by the same team of observers was unprecedented – but that is what happened.Read more
Clive Roberts is a fish biologist who joined the National Museum in 1990, shortly before it evolved into Te Papa. He has particular interests in the identification and distribution of New Zealand fishes within the wider Pacific region. This has included surveys of deep reefs, oceanic ridges and seamounts, andRead more
Pat Brownsey is a fern specialist who joined the National Museum (now Te Papa) botany team in 1977, and is still finding fern mysteries to solve. Pat moved to New Zealand in 1973 after completing a PhD on ferns at the University of Leeds. The abundance and diversity of fernsRead more
Bruce Marshall is a self-taught malacologist (shell expert) who has worked at Te Papa, and the previous National Museum, since 1976. As collection manager of molluscs, Bruce is responsible for a vast collection of several million specimens representing more than 4,700 New Zealand species. These range in size from tinyRead more
The three kings (or three wise men or magi) are Christian icons – but how many people are aware that they have seaweeds named after them? The connection is via the Three Kings Islands north-west of Cape Reinga. Known as Manawatahi to Māori, they are one of only two localitiesRead more
The 10,000th image loaded on New Zealand Birds Online might seem an unlikely image to celebrate, but it has an astonishing back-story. It is a well-camouflaged clutch of four eggs, laid by a tiny wading bird that doesn’t even breed in New Zealand. The image was taken by Russian biologistRead more
Former museum director Alan Baker was a keen scuba diver with research interests in marine invertebrates (especially sea urchins and starfish), fish, whales and dolphins. Te Papa turned 150 years old on 8 December 2015. To celebrate 150 years since the opening of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, the exhibitionRead more
