10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 16, 2013
Diving has taken me to places like Belize, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Egypt, places that coincidentally are fun to bird. It was one that myself and a collection of friends, all of whom where marine biologists, rocked up to one New Year’s Eve in order to dive the following day. Kina, or Sea Urchin. I was a diver before I was a birder.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 14, 2015
What wasn’t publicised at the time, but the scientist later both admitted and owned, is that the kingfisher was then killed and collected for scientific reasons. I’m not going to rehash the arguments for scientific collecting here. The large room the collection was held in was a profoundly weird place. Bush Wrens.
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10,000 Birds
MARCH 30, 2011
The genus is Cyanoramphus , and they are sometimes known collectively as the kakariki (literally little kaka). Incidentally the two genera form a sister clade to another Pacific genus, Prospeia , the shining-parrots, a gorgeous trio of parrots endemic to Fiji. Yellow-crowned Parakeet , Cyanoramphus auriceps.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 7, 2013
I finally managed to get some photos as I found a pair of fantails in the Marlborough sounds that were very interested in me as a source of bugs (they will often follow trampers in the forest to collect flying insects) and being out in the open there was a limited supply of perches and plenty of good light.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 7, 2014
The bird today is documented physically by only a single specimen (a second was lost), but where the specimens were collected — and therefore where this species actually lived before its extinction — is unknown. Specimens were collected in 1904, and the bird has not been recorded with certainty since.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 8, 2012
The fossil record here is actually very good for birds, but across the whole of the country the entire collection of bones of pelicans only represented seven individuals. For starters New Zealand didn’t seem to have or have ever had the right type of wetlands to sustain a population of this large piscivore. And, sometimes, New Zealand.
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