Showing posts for 'Environment and Ecology'. Clear search
A short stay in Kenya
December 17, 2014 - The World Bank is pressing forward with a study on reducing the illegal trade in ivory. Part of that process involved ge...
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Looking for spiders
August 02, 2014 - Winter isn't the optimal time to be looking for creepy-crawlies in New Zealand. Even though expectations were low, I sti...
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Photography with Kodak Ektar
July 10, 2014 - It is becoming a challenge to keep up the film photography, so last month aI made a concerted effort to get through one...
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A winter visit to Waterfall Gully
June 28, 2014 - Youngest child had a 'thing' on the Whangaparoa Peninsular on Saturday morning. So we ventured north at a pre-dawn hour...
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Elephant poaching in decline
June 24, 2014 - Ahead of the Standing Committee CITES meeting in July, a number of documents have been circulated. One is SC65-42-01. Th...
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It's been raining
June 22, 2014 - It still is. But I needed to photograph something this weekend. I've been head down, working on a lot of research projec...
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Photography fun
June 04, 2014 - The weather on the long weekend was rather glorious, and my daughter wanted to take some photos around the Auckland Muse...
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Monday night spiders
May 19, 2014 - Well, I seem to have got off on a classic Minolta lens binge at the moment. Minolta made the first popular auto-focus ca...
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ANZAC Day 2014 at Browns Bay
April 24, 2014 - Today was the 99th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing in World War One, and for Australia and New Zealand, an event th...
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Tiger time in the Sping Thaw
April 23, 2014 - Well as part of the last expedition to China we got up north. Very north. There was still snow on the ground even though...
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Urban Grit
April 15, 2014 - I think one of the challenges to travel photography is finding ways to capture the feel of a place. The reason this beco...
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Unsafe for everyone
March 30, 2014 - Fine particulates less than 2.5 micrometers across are recognised as hazardous to human populations. The particles are s...
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Summer Singers
February 22, 2014 - The cicadas have been particularly vocal this month. This has been helped by the numbers of them. The local population h...
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Ivory News: Some Snippets
February 11, 2014 - Some snippets of news on the illegal trade in ivory from around the world.
The USA has been contemplating a ban (or mor...
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Fresh from the camera: Kereru
February 10, 2014 - New Zealand has two native pigeons, and the kereru is the species found on the main islands. It is a large bird, found i...
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Good weather not required- a visit to Te Puia
February 06, 2014 - As most of us know, this summer hasn't quite been up to the relentless hot weather and clear summer days of the past. We...
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Time on the beach
January 21, 2014 - One of the consequences of our fondness for beaches is pressure on native birds that live there. Whilst sea gulls may se...
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Small hitchhikers
December 02, 2013 - This time of year you might notice some flies repeatedly shaking their legs. A closer look will show a tiny, pale brown...
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In the ruins
November 24, 2013 - It's sometimes easy to imagine NZ only offers opportunities to take stunning pictures of nature. We don't have the histo...
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In the summer
November 16, 2013 - A few summers back we visited Waiheke Island. This was the classic NZ holiday, a rustic campground (no power) with days...
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An NZ maelstrom
November 13, 2013 - The Huka Falls is in a narrow ravine that connects Lake Taupo with the Waikato River. At this point you get to see what...
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Wild NZ
October 27, 2013 - One of the great things about New Zealand is we're not starved for good landscape scenes. On the other hand the weather...
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The largest pigeon in the world
September 24, 2013 - The NZ kereru is a (threatened) but extant pigeon. It is the only native pigeon species in NZ and is also the largest. T...
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A high-key pic
September 06, 2013 - This shot is from the Okura track and the eventual beach you arrive at. The weather was dull and poor, which meant few o...
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Xishuangbanna: The Butterfly Edition
August 12, 2013 - This region in Yunnan still has a diverse range of butterflies. This was one expedition where a macro lens is practicall...
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The Large Animal Xishuangbanna Edition
August 09, 2013 - The trip to Xishuangbanna was largely to take a look at the Chinese management of this area. It is a very green part of...
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The Xishuangbanna Edition: Black and whites
August 09, 2013 - The moments for photography were fleeting, but I tried to keep an eye out for scenes that might suit a black-and-white p...
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A quick look at Xishuangbanna
August 02, 2013 - Well, I'm still in China. I think the meeting on 'trans-boundary conservation' and 'combating illegal trade' in tigers w...
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More pics from Monday
July 10, 2013 - And we have three more photos from the hike along the Mokora Stream near Muriwai. As with all of these pics, an essentia...
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Going feral again
July 07, 2013 - Well students are turning up next week for the new semester. This motivated an escape back up to the Mokoroa Stream near...
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Native Crab Spider
June 26, 2013 - New Zealand has two main genera of crab spiders. One of the common forest ones is Sidymella, whose drab appearance and c...
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What do you find in herb gardens?
June 21, 2013 - Well, it's not always herbs:) This is our blue-tongue skink getting some outdoor sun and exercise this summer. The other...
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Back to tigers? Waiting on the paper work
June 18, 2013 - I'm hoping I can pull off an expedition to Kunming and Xishuangbanna (Yunnan) in Late July. Currently the paper work has...
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The long long exposure
June 11, 2013 - Despite camera manufacturers finding ways to keep increasing the ISO ratings of their cameras higher and higher, some of...
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Raindrops
June 08, 2013 - What to do in a wet weekend is often a puzzle. I have no enthusiasm for shopping so that rules out going to a mall. It's...
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Going feral in the weekend
May 19, 2013 - What Ive found of late, is that it is harder to disconnect from the rest of the world, simply because connecting is now...
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Bird photo for Friday
May 09, 2013 - It really feels like winter has arrived in New Zealand. The recent torrential rain and dips in temperature have signaled...
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Mapping tiger smuggling
November 04, 2012 - One of the first problems I ran into with researching tiger smuggling was the bias. A lot of the studies had been done b...
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Smuggler caught with 16 Tiger Cubs
October 28, 2012 - A colleague drew my attention to this story out of Thailand
BBC-News Thailand
The story is principally about a truck...
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Tuesday #Travel - The beat goes on
October 22, 2012 - This shot was from Jilin in Northern China. Jilin is one of the tiger-smuggling hot spots within China, which is really...
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The Birds of Spring
October 07, 2012 - It's been a tough few weeks for photography as work pressure and turbulent weather has got in the way of employing the c...
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Wednesday #Wildlife: Fluffy!
September 18, 2012 - I took my daughter to Lake Pupuke recently for a session on bird-photography. The weather was of curse, atrocious. It wa...
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Tuesday #Travel: Auckland City
September 17, 2012 - This is a panoramic shot of Auckland city taken from the Waitakere Ranges. The clear air reveals a number of landmarks,...
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Monday #Macro: Under the Cover of the Night
September 16, 2012 - One of the reasons to attempt photography at night time is you get the chance to see behaviours that don't occur during...
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Wednesday #Wildlife: Birdlife
September 11, 2012 - A local visitor, foraging for nectar. This is the Tauhou or silvereye. They kind of appeal to me with their bright white...
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Tuesday #Travel: Watching You
September 10, 2012 - International borders are one of those fun spots in the world, where contraband items try to make it across. The provinc...
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Monday #Macro: down low
September 09, 2012 - This is (surprise surprise) another fungus shot, aided with the assistance of my Macro Twin Flash. The diffused side lig...
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Scenic photos from Mokoroa #Stream
September 07, 2012 - This is definitely one of the most picturesque nature reserves I've visited in the West Auckland area. It's sometimes ha...
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Take me to the river: Mokoroa #Waterfall
September 05, 2012 - The Mokoroa Stream includes a waterfall. In fact, it consists of twin falls as two streams feed into it.
This fall is...
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Relax- Mokoroa #Stream
September 04, 2012 - While the earlier post showed some more dynamic sections of the Mokoroa Stream, there are also much more placid sections...
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Wednesday #Wildlife - Southern Bell Frog
September 04, 2012 - New Zealand has three frog species introduced from Australia in the 1800s. This along with a four native and very archai...
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Tuesday #Travel: Sunset
September 03, 2012 - A shot from the West Coast of the South Island. The sun is starting to set, giving the sky a red hue. The West Coast is...
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Time for a cool change
September 02, 2012 - Last Wednesday in Auckland had the coincidence of clear skies, cool temperatures and a study-break on campus. I put in f...
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Wednesday #Wildlife : Don’t Blink
August 29, 2012 - It's a bit of a belated Wednesday blog post as I went feral yesterday and disappeared into some native bush for the day.
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Tuesday #Travel – TCM shops
August 27, 2012 - This pic is of a row of Traditional Chinese Medicine shops at the Xi'an market. For the most part, the ingredients for T...
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Monday #Macro – Moth
August 26, 2012 - To prove that I don't always take macro photos of spiders, here's a small moth I located last week in an evening session...
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Wednesday #Wildlife 2
August 21, 2012 - Juvenile Meerkats at Auckland Zoo. Can you withstand the 'cute'?:)
These guys appeared late afternoon on my last...
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Wednesday Wildife – #Tiger
August 14, 2012 - While I spent last night photographing local predators (assorted NZ spiders), I thought people would probably appreciate...
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What is wrong with some people?
February 19, 2012 - Having made the move to a new place, with a bit of native bush around, the weekend was spent doing a lot of outside task...
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Today's #Kotuku Photo
January 30, 2012 - This bird is a bit of a survivor. Count the legs:)
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It tastes good! #kaka feeding
January 18, 2012 - New Zealand actually has a small number of endemic parrot species. These include the kakapo (a species that has received...
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Today's #kotuku photo
January 17, 2012 - This shot is of the heron springing into flight at Okarito.
Link to larger image
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Back into civilisation- kotuku photo
January 14, 2012 - We had a good family expedition over the Xmas-New year period, getting as far south as Fox Glacier. Along the way I took...
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