Aotearoa New Zealand has eleven official Great Walks. Te Papa natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly has walked (or paddled) them all, and kept records of the birds that he encountered along the way. In this sixth blog in the series, he reports on the birds encountered while walking theRead more
Aotearoa New Zealand has ten official Great Walks. Te Papa natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly has walked (or paddled) them all, and kept records of the birds that he encountered along the way. In this fifth blog in the series, he reports on the birds encountered while walking the Abel Tasman Coastal Track.Read more
Aotearoa New Zealand has eleven official Great Walks. Te Papa natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly has walked (or paddled) them all, and kept records of the birds that he encountered along the way. In this fourth blog in the series, he reports on the birds encountered while walking LakeRead more
Three species of Aotearoa New Zealand forget-me-nots (Myosotis, Boraginaceae) have been described in a paper by Te Papa Botany Curator Heidi Meudt and her colleague, Jessie Prebble (Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research). Each of these species is endemic to the South Island but has a restricted geographic distribution. Meet the new species below and find out how to recognise them in the field. All three species have also been beautifully illustrated by Bobbi Angell.Read more
Aotearoa New Zealand has ten official Great Walks. Te Papa natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly has walked (or paddled) them all, and kept records of the birds that he encountered along the way. In this third blog in the series, he reports on the birds encountered while walking the Tongariro Northern Circuit.Read more
Aotearoa New Zealand has eleven official Great Walks. Te Papa natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly has walked (or paddled) them all and kept records of the birds that he encountered along the way. In this second blog in the series, he reports on the birds encountered while paddling downRead more
Aotearoa New Zealand has many great walks. However, as of late 2024, only eleven of them qualify as capital-letter Great Walks. Te Papa natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly has walked (or paddled) them all and kept records of the birds that he encountered along the way. In this initialRead more
The 15,000th image loaded on New Zealand Birds Online was of an adult male North Island kokako | Kōkako on Tiritiri Matangi Island, taken by Oscar Thomas. Oscar is a university student and author of the 2020 book A Naturalist’s Guide to the Birds of New Zealand. Here, he answers a few questionsRead more
Between November 2022 and February 2023, Te Papa Natural History interns Tobia Dale and Ben Carson assisted with the curation of three major donations of Aotearoa New Zealand pepeketua and mokomoko. In this fourth and final blog about their work, they highlight some very special frogs that they were privilegedRead more
Between November 2022 and February 2023, Te Papa Natural History interns Tobia Dale and Ben Carson assisted with the curation of three major donations of New Zealand frogs and lizards. In this third blog about their work, Tobia describes her attempt to track down the first evidence of a deadly fungus in Aotearoa New Zealand.Read more
Between November 2022 and February 2023, Natural History interns Tobia Dale and Ben Carson assisted with the curation of three major donations of New Zealand frogs and lizards. Following their first blog on processing pickled pepeketua (native frogs), this second blog describes their processing of a large collection of native lizards from the 1980s, and an opportunity to see several of these species in the wild on Mana Island.Read more
I recently spent a week on Norfolk Island collecting ferns. One non-fern plant I was particularly keen to see was harakeke (Phormium tenax), on which I’ve done recent genetic work. On Norfolk Island it is known as flax, so I’ll use that name here. What I hadn’t appreciated before the trip was the significance of flax to the settlement of Norfolk Island.Read more
The iNaturalist City Nature Challenge is an annual event to see which city can record the most observations, species, and participants over a four-day period. 2023 was the third year that Wellington has participated. Science Researcher Lara Shepherd highlights some of the interesting discoveries made during the challenge. This yearRead more
Assistant Curator Natural History Andrew Stewart describes a recent specimen processed by the Fishes team – one of the more striking deep-water predators and relative to the barracouta (a.k.a. the Fisherman’s curse), a large oilfish called Ruvettus pretiosus. Read more
Three Te Papa botanists recently visited Norfolk Island together with colleagues from the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Their purpose was to collect ferns for research. Curator of Botany Leon Perrie introduces the significance of Norfolk Island’s ferns. Our research programme investigating the relationships and naming of Aotearoa New Zealand’s fernsRead more
