Alan Tennyson and Colin Miskelly taking a blood sample from a fulmar prion. Toru Islet with main Snares Islands in background. 28 Nov 2013 Photographer Antony Kusabs ©Te Papa

The most abundant bird on the Snares Islands is the sooty shearwater (also known as the muttonbird or tītī). Four Te Papa scientists had the daunting task of counting over a million sooty shearwaters on the islands to determine the trends in their population. Watch the video to see howRead more

Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently spent 12 days on Ohinau Island (east of Whitianga, Coromandel Peninsula) as part of a Te Papa seabird research team studying flesh-footed shearwaters. This blog reports on the seabird species found on the island and nearby Ohinauiti Island. Ohinau is a 43Read more

Ohinau Island Coromandel

Keeping track of our protected species populations and their distribution is one of the tasks of biologists, and this summer Te Papa scientists surveyed sites in the Mercury Islands group for seabird populations. Flesh-footed shearwaters Puffinus carneipes breed throughout northern New Zealand, with a total population size in New Zealand ofRead more