Avian Predators of New Zealand, Part 2

Haast’s eagle wasn’t the only bird that used to take on moa. Meet the kea, the Gremlin of the air. Cute, huh? These little guys live on the South Island of New Zealand, mostly in high-altitude forest. People often come across kea at ski areas or on mountain hikes. Kea typically eat berries and shoots. [...]

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Avian Predators of New Zealand, Part 1

Tonight’s entry will be the first installment of a New Zealand twofer. New Zealand is the land of birds – it has no native mammals. Like any non-exclusively avian ecosystem, however, the islands have their share of browsers and hunters, predators and prey. They just happen to be all birds. In the coming posts, I’ll [...]

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Young Tyrannosaurs bit each other’s faces

As promised, the Tyrannosaurus Versus Sperm Whale blog is branching out from whales to… Tyrannosaurs. Predictable? Perhaps. You see, my sister’s birthday is coming up, and I’m more grateful than ever that she’s just the way she is. Because if she’d been born a Tyrannosaurus, I’d be screwed. I’d always suspected that having a T. [...]

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Clash of titans caught on film

                      I swear that this blog will branch out beyond whales. But for now, photographers have finally caught sperm whales eating giant squid on camera. For years, the only evidence that sperm whales eat giant squid was in the form of  sucker-shaped scars around the [...]

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Nature, and the things that matter

Nature is wider than highway medians, greater than national parks, smaller than ants, more complex than the human brain. It’s more interesting than what’s taught in most classrooms, and much more detailed. Nature is bull humpback whales rushing for a mate, for instance. As a foretaste of things to come on this blog, here’s the [...]

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