New Zealand: Takahē

Perhaps you remember the pūkeko that appeared here in the first round of New Zealand pictures. Well, this is its flightless cousin, the South Island takahē, Porphyrio hochstetteri. By the mid-20th century the species was believed extinct but, as Wikipedia tells it, “[Dr. Geoffrey] Orbell suspected it might survive. While taking time off from his Invercargill practice to search for the takahē, he discovered a set of unfamiliar footprints. After following the footprints with three companions he rediscovered the species on 20 November 1948 in a remote valley of the Murchison Mountains near Lake Te Anau.” Since then the takahē has been nursed away from the brink of extinction, as attested by this one that I photographed at the Zealandia Sanctuary on February 21st. The picture also attests to the fact these birds like to use their beak to peck the ground and pull out plants.

For much more information about this largest living member of the rail family of birds, you can read articles at New Zealand Birds, the unrelated New Zealand Birds Online, and Wikipedia.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Unusually curvaceous lichen

Along Moa Point Rd. in the southern part of Wellington on February 20th I found these fascinating lichens, which almost seemed to have been applied to the rocks with a squeeze bottle.

(Thanks to New Zealander Raewyn, I learned that a few days ago strong winds and high waves battered this very area.)

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Fibonacci comes to the Marlborough rock daisy

One native plant that caught my attention at Otari-Wilton’s Bush in Wellington on February 20th was the Marlborough rock daisy, Pachystegia insignis. In the central disk of these seed head remains you can confirm the presence of consecutive Fibonacci numbers: I count 13 clockwise spirals and 21 counter-clockwise spirals (I believe New Zealanders say anti-clockwise), and I’ve thrown in 1 conspicuous shadow at no extra charge.

If you’d like to confirm the Fibonacci counts for yourself, click on the disk below for an enlargement. I find it easier to pick out the counter-clockwise spirals, but both are there.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: One second in the life of the surf at Mount Maunganui

Thanks to my camera’s burst mode, these four consecutive frames cover approximately one second in the breaking of a wave on the coastal rocks at Mount Maunganui on February 25th.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Hebe

After two consecutive posts with no text (but double pictures to compensate), here come words again. Most of the wildflowers that I saw during my three-and-a-half weeks in New Zealand weren’t native, but one that I encountered was not only native but also endemic: Hebe acutiflora. It normally grows on the North Island, although I found this specimen in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens on February 14th.

Did you know that Hebe was the ancient Greek goddess of youth? And did you know that cartoonist William De Beck (1890-1942) coined the term heebie-jeebies in his comic strip Barney Google (which you can google) to mean ‘jitters, nervousness, uneasiness’? If these Hebe flowers give any of you the heebie-jeebies, I’ll be quite surprised.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Yet another pair of geothermal formations at Te Puia on February 23rd

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Two more geothermal formations from Te Puia on February 23rd

 

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Turutu amid ferns

Not everything at Wai-O-Tapu is geothermal. There are also some pleasant areas of native bush, in one of which I found a turutu plant among lush ferns when I walked about on February 24th. You can’t see much of the plant per se, but its colorful little fruits are hard to miss, and they’ve prompted the vernacular names blueberry and inkberry. For more information about what botanists know as Dianella nigra, you can check out the relevant T.E.R.R:A.I.N article.

(I’ve added an update to yesterday’s post about the possible pronunciations of the word elephantine, of which there are at least four.)

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Elephantine

On February 23rd I spent a few hours at Te Puia, one of the geothermal attractions in Rotorua. Of the rock surfaces there, this one particularly fascinated me with its “eye” and its texture, both of which now strike me as elephantine.

UPDATE: I should have noted that there are four pronunciations for the word elephantine, which you’ll see listed (and can listen to by clicking the little speaker icons) at Oxford Dictionaries.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Sulfur and steam

Here begins the fourth and penultimate installment of photographs from the great February trip to Aotearoa, known in English as New Zealand.

At Te Puia, one of the geothermal attractions in Rotorua, I photographed this formation on February 23rd. Yellow is generally an indication of sulfur, and steam is generally an indication of hot water.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman