Inquisitive, intelligent, bold—kea find humans and their cast-offs every bit as intriguing as we find them. But our relationship with these cocky mountain parrots has not always been so cordial. For over a century, farmers slaughtered kea in their thousands in retribution for their attacks on sheep. Only now, with changes in high-country management and […]...
Zooming in like a mouse on wings, a bumblebee prepares to gorge on a favourite food source: tree lucerne. Cast in popular imagination as quaint, cumbersome and “of no use because they don’t make honey,” the bumblebee’s virtues as a tireless and effective pollinator are only now being appreciated and put to work. Far from […]...
At the shallow end of Willis Street a pod of painted dolphins cavorts among the citizens. “There’s more to life than shopping,” they might be saying....
When the walnut stock of the McCarthy shotgun touched Captain Elchold’s cheek the fate of yet another pigeon seemed inevitable. With the precision of a gun turret he tracked the bird across the sky and was about to pull the trigger. Suddenly, he stopped. The pigeon crash-landed into the mop of a miro tree, but […]...
Homesickness and uncertainty show on the faces of Tokelauans returning to the islands. Although Tokelau is counted as part of New Zealand, living conditions in this last Pacific dependency lag far behind those in the rest of the country, and the islanders are faced with the dilemma of whether to become independent. But in this lonely tropical outpost […]...
A snowflake falling slowly through the air is one of the most peaceful sights in nature, but a million billion snowflakes falling together is one of the most destructive. A 500,000-tonne snow avalanche peeling vertically off a mountainside can reach speeds of over 300 kilometres per hour. So much air is displaced by the falling […]...
As the year draws towards its close, so the splendid arch of the Milky Way—such a feature of the winter sky—lies ever lower across the horizon, carrying with it those stunning constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius. For city dwellers, the sky overhead begins to seem almost empty. This visual desert is in part due to light pollution which […]...
