Eyes in the dark
I'm halfway up a tree and there's a Duvaucell's gecko giving me a very disconcerting grin. I'm perched so I can see across the expanse of burrowed ground that forms…
Rangatira – South East Island
I wrote a blog a while ago about the Chatham islands, and how I was looking forward to visiting Rangatira for a seabird translocation project. It's taken me a while…
Dawn at the Snares
The wind was howling when I woke up, but it's an unusual day when the wind isn't howling in the southern ocean. The sky is a swirled and subtle mix…
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White fantail
This little bird, this unusual leucistic fantail, spurred a lot of interest last year. I spent a lot of time watching it and chatting to people visiting the cemetery where…
Ulva Island Birdventures
Every day for a week, I hopped on the Rakiura Charters boat at Golden Bay, disembarked on Ulva island, and spent the day in solitude. Well, nearly solitude. Human solitude…
Blue and gold
Light goes quickly in the mountains, particularly in winter. Days start cold and blue, even with clear skies. They end cold and blue, golden rays barely eking over the stark…
Hardwicke Settlement – tiny details
The evening we stopped at the Hardwicke settlement on Auckland Island was golden. We'd had a pretty rough ride for the start of the subantarctic voyage, and our plans to…
Return of the vignettes
Way back in 2015, I developed a habit of posting a single image with a caption as an additional blog every Wednesday. This was to keep my creative mojo up…
Shooting stormies
I realised that the title could be a little misleading, or at least interpreted in different ways. I meant it in the sense that the white-faced storm petrels were like…
Chathams
I've visited the Chatham islands three times in the past four years. The best was a month spent at Taiko camp, lending a hand feeding 100 tītī (sooty shearwater) chicks…