Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently led a team that visited Takapourewa / Stephens Island Nature Reserve, to select and gather up 100 fairy prion chicks to move to Mana Island near Wellington. This is the second in a series of blogs about the project and the wildlifeRead more
Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently led a team that visited Takapourewa / Stephens Island Nature Reserve, to select and gather up 100 fairy prion chicks to move to Mana Island near Wellington. This is the first in a series of blogs about the project and the wildlifeRead more
Would you scramble into a ‘horrible hole’ to count bird chicks? How about counting the regurgitated remains of a meal? It’s all in a day’s work for Alan Tennyson, a Te Papa scientist studying broad-billed prions (pararā). Can you mimic a bird as well as Alan can mimic a prion?Read more
Take a glimpse of this remote corner of New Zealand, and follow Te Papa’s scientists as they go scrambling up rocks and cliffs to carry out their research. Three kilometres to the west of the main Snares Islands lies the isolated Western Chain group. They are rarely visited, and canRead more
After spending most of my life living in coastal towns and devoting much of my professional career to the study of marine birds, I have always felt a strong attachment to the ocean. So naturally, I was thrilled to hear that this week is SeaWeek! There are events being heldRead more
This was one of the key questions that we were trying to answer when four Te Papa scientists – Colin Miskelly, Antony Kusabs, Jean-Claude Stahl and I – set off for the subantarctic Snares Islands in November-December 2013. The Snares are one of the world’s great seabird islands and broad-billedRead more
A Te Papa team recently visited the Snares Islands, 105 km south-southwest of Stewart Island, where they completed a range of seabird research projects. The most time-consuming task was a re-survey of the vast sooty shearwater (titi, or muttonbird) population there. Estimating the population size was based on two mainRead more
Te Papa’s curator of terrestrial vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly is researching the life and work of the Canterbury naturalist Edgar Stead (1881-1949). This includes re-taking Stead’s photos from the same photo-point, taking other images to illustrate his diaries, and describing how the ecology and wildlife of each of 11 islandsRead more
On Tuesday, 22 October 2013 we, the ornithology team at Te Papa, hosted the museum’s second Science Live event- Whalebirds- the mystery of the storm riders. We brought the public into the lab using live streaming so they could watch us on YouTube and send questions in via Twitter andRead more
Today’s blog is a prequel to yesterday’s Science Live event- Whalebirds- the mystery of the storm riders (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVZjED7Icyc). It is written by Dr. Lisa Argilla. Lisa has been the Veterinary Science Manager at Wellington Zoo since early 2011. She has a keen interest in seabirds seeing as herRead more
Unfortunately, the short answer is that we know very little about the origin of these little seabirds that are now perhaps the most abundant birds in the southern oceans. Prions are a form of petrel – also called ‘tubenoses’ or ‘Procellariiformes’ – a group which includes the albatrosses, fulmars, shearwaters,Read more
Here is the seventh instalment in our series of blogs all about prion biology! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd (today!) at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube videoRead more
Here is the sixth instalment in our series of blogs all about prions! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube video can beRead more
Here is the fifth instalment in our series of blogs all about prions! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube video can beRead more
Here is the forth instalment in our series of blogs all about prions! This is in preparation for our upcoming Science Live event on Oct 22nd at 1:50 pm NZ time when you can accompany us into the lab via live streaming (a permanent link to the YouTube video can be foundRead more
