What is a brightly coloured parakeet whose nearest ancestors live in the tropics, doing in the company of penguins in the subantarctic? Kakariki, New Zealand’s endemic parakeets, break all the rules.

For nearly two centuries, the origins of a Spanish whaler and trader who founded a dynasty on the east coast were a mystery. Manuel Jose’s descendants are New Zealand’s largest family, and have ...

Virtual Reality / 360 Video - NZ 360 Nov 15: Leigh Wharf The irony is that the camera can't see far enough to properly document the worst sites in the Hauraki Gulf—they're too turbid to see more than ...

As I write this, Easter beckons and the stores are awash with Easter eggs. Eggs have traditionally been as­sociated with new life and, in Chris­tendom, the resurrection of Christ. In some countries, ...

Lake Taupo lies in the caldera of an active supervolcano, the site of the world’s most violent eruption of the last 70,000 years. Just 10 km beneath it sits another lake of molten rock 50 km wide and ...

In the late 19th century, news of a strange antipodean bird with beautiful tail feathers, orange wattles, and a long curved beak spread around the British Empire. To Māori, it was a tapu bird—a sacred ...

Gardeners with a keen sense of history can now forge a botanical link with a plant which hasn’t been seen on these shores for millions of years. A species of Ecuadorian coconut has been success­fully ...

In the South Island’s remote subalpine regions, a highly terrestrial songbird—one of two surviving species of New Zealand wren—has hopped, chirped and flown in the face of extinction. There are four ...

While the use of 1080 to control possums may not please everyone, it is putting a smile on the face of staff in the Department of Conservation’s Wanganui conservancy. Several of the conservancy’s ...

The invasive seaweed Caulerpa brachypus was discovered in New Zealand just over a year ago, and it promises to ruin everything. On Aotea/Great Barrier Island, people are sacrificing their way of life ...

Most manta encounters take place in the area north of Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island, but their ways are still a mystery, says Lydia Green, who coordinates a database of public manta ray ...

I can’t fully recall how the affair started, it was so long ago. I was in Pat Bergquist’s invertebrate zoology class, at the University of Auckland, in 1975. She was talking about sponges. Bergquist ...