Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly recently visited the Poor Knights Islands Nature Reserve, off the Northland coast, as part of a research team tracking the at-sea movements of Buller’s shearwaters. The project is led by Graeme Taylor of the Department of Conservation, and is intended toRead more

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Julien Collet CNRS Research Assistant keeps an eye out for whales and seabirds from the top deck of the Marion Dufresne. Image: Susan Waugh, © Te Papa

Our visit to the Crozet Islands, a French Sub-Antarctic nature reserve at 41 deg S in the Indian Ocean started yesterday, embarking on the RV Marion Dufresne. We’re steaming straight south from La Reunion, towards the Crozet Islands, with landfall due in about 6 days. Overnight we made good steamingRead more

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Marion du Fresne and local boy at port in St Denis La Reunion. Image: Susan Waugh, (C) Te Papa.

A two-month long research programme is getting underway for Te Papa Senior Curator Dr Susan Waugh, in collaboration with the French CNRS Research Institute and Polar Institute (IPEV). Susan departs from La Reunion on February 7th to take part in a programme of work on the personality of Albatrosses onRead more

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New Zealand Post has just released a series of postage stamps featuring five New Zealand ferns. The illustrations are excellent. Images of the stamps, from New Zealand Post’s website. The five ferns featured are: hen and chickens fern, Asplenium bulbiferum – $0.70 kidney fern, Cardiomanes reniforme – $1.40 Colenso’s hardRead more

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In: History, Science

I’d like to introduce a new species of New Zealand fern, Gleichenia inclusisora. Our scientific description was published just before Christmas 2012. The recognition of this species edges the number of native New Zealand fern and lycophyte species nearly to 200. Abstract of paper describing Gleichenia inclusisora. Email me ifRead more

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St Joseph’s Home for Incurable opens 113 years ago (29 January 1900) This home for so-called ‘incurables’, in Buckle Street, Wellington, was an initiative set up by Reverend Mother Mary Joseph Aubert, with the help of Catholic nuns, the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion. Mother Aubert was the founderRead more

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In: History

Orchids are one of the top five plant groups with conservation issues in New Zealand. Unlike many other endangered or uncommon plants, propagation of native orchids from seed for conservation has not been attempted in New Zealand before. With the help of funding from the Otari Wilton’s Bush Trust, theRead more

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Curator Dougal Austin condition reporting all 216 objects, November 2012. Callum Strong.

Kura Pounamu is Te Papa’s first exhibition of Maori Taonga in China since the National Museum sent Maori artifacts in 1978. The mutual appreciation of ‘green stone’ jadite (jade) and nephrite (pounamu) provided an ideal platform for re-establishing a cultural exchange. The exhibition required ease of installation and minimal objectRead more

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In: Behind the scenes, Māori
Te Papa curator Colin Miskelly checks out a giant ongaonga leaf. Photo credit: Lara Shepherd

Whilst recently chasing seabirds on Titi Island we came across tree nettles (ongaonga, Urtica ferox) with super-sized leaves. The largest leaf we measured was 28 cm long, much longer than the maximum leaf length of 18 cm given for this species in the Flora of New Zealand. Perhaps the abundantRead more

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Plants can grow in what appear to be the strangest places.  This can be frustrating for property owners (e.g., grass in the gutter; footpaths cracked by pohutukawa roots). But our view of plants is often from our own animal-centric perspective; unlike our zoological kin, an individual plant doesn’t have theRead more

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Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly tells the 12th, and probably final, instalment of the story of the emperor penguin that went where none had gone before. Previous blogs on the penguin were posted between 23 June 2011 and 24 April 2012. For those of you interestedRead more

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Titi Island is a 32-ha reserve administered by the Department of Conservation and situated in the outer Marlborough Sounds. The island’s fauna was impacted by introduced Norway rats until these were eradicated in the early 1970s. The island has since been free of all introduced predators. Two species of largeRead more

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A team from the Discovery Centres recently spent nine Wednesday afternoons together with nine awesome tamariki (children) in a trial run of Te Papa’s first after school club. Through the after school club we wanted to learn, together with the tamariki, about the stories Te Papa tells. We also wantedRead more

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In: Education, Photography