Monday September 18th, 2006. 11:47 am by frog
Voting has opened for Forest and Bird’s annual Bird of the Year poll - you can vote online here. Personally, my vote’s with the Kakapo:
There are only 86 of them left, they are totally unique, and they make the coolest booming sound.
Posted in Environment & Resource Management | by frog | Mon, September 18th, 2006 |
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September 18th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
It’s got to be Weka. Weka, weka weka weka weka!!!!!!!
They are staunch, not-cute, steal things and make the coolest squawking sound.
I had a mate called Geoff Weka (who was a weka) when I was working down south. He once stole a tramper’s muesli bar and left it in front of the door of my hut warden’s quarters a couple of days later.
Vote weka! They never let you down!
September 18th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
My lifetime favourite is the Kea !!!
A member of the parrot family, Kea is intelligent, (and this mountain parrot definitely has a sense of humour.)
If reincarnated, I’d want to return as a Kea … Living in the high mountains in the snow and riding thermals just for fun … WOW!
(A gender change would be good, however, as the polygynous male Kea seem to have more interesting lives while their mates stay home and do almost all of the family stuff!)
NOW, BACK TO REALITY: …although the Kea population is declining, I think frog is right … The seriously endangered Kakapo will get my vote this year!
“ered” (= mountain) “wen” (=woman)
September 19th, 2006 at 5:44 am
how about the “the greater fornicating brash-bird’..?
phil(whoar)..
or that rarely seen/shy/secretive ‘russell norman-bird’…?
September 19th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
“There are only 86 of them left, they are totally unique, and they make the coolest booming sound”
There’s quite a few weka that the stoats haven’t got to yet, they are generally uninteresting and they make a raucous squawk. Vote weka because dull and brown birds deserve to survive and species shouldn’t be more valued just because we’ve killed off most of their membership. Help move attention from things that happen to be cute and obscure.
Support your neighbourhood weka!!
September 19th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Sam B:
” … because dull and brown birds deserve to survive”
Was that an intentionally ” sexist/racist remark” ?
Neat !!
September 19th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Today on National Radio … the first godwits have just completed their annual return-flight: from Siberia (where they breed each year) to the Chritchurch Estuary (where I can see them from my house).
The Wildlife Officer interviewed suggested that the godwit would be a good choice for Bird of the Year …
September 19th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
After seeing a documentary about the Kea by Mr Attenborough (have I spelt that right?) I’d have to vote for that one. It’s mischevious, intelligent and does what it thinks is best. I’d also go so far as to say it should be our national bird and not a half blind nocturnal flightless thing that evolution left behind hundreds of thousands of years ago. That is not to say that the unique and biologically interesting shouldn’t be protected and cared for but rather those who change and adapt while still maintaining an individuality in sympathy with a special enviroment are somewhat more special.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
artyone:
The male Kiwi is a good role model in that he incubates the egg. (The female needs time to recover after laying such a huge egg.)
September 20th, 2006 at 10:45 am
What about Toroa, our royal albatross? I might vote for that as a symbol of all of our beautiful seabirds that are getting hammered by fisheries…
This?
http://www.greglasley.net/Images/Royal-Albatross-0021.jpg
or this? - as is increasingly the case in “clean/green” NZ.
http://www.oikonos.org/images/bfal_bycatch_small.jpg
September 26th, 2006 at 10:49 am
Do birds really need to provide a ‘role model’ to human beings to be in the running to win ‘Bird of the Year’? That’s anthropomorphism taken to a ridiculous extreme - you may as well dress your cat up as a baby and expect it to provide moral leadership to human infants.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Progress report: the tui is in the lead, closely followed by the fantail/piwakawaka, and the kereru/wood pigeon is third. But still about 3 weeks of voting to go.
September 26th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
lightcircle said:
“That’s anthropomorphism taken to a ridiculous extreme …”
“role model” was used in a facetious manner. I was remembering my father (a keen ornitholigist) when he first pointed out the very different behaviours of male kea and male kiwi to me, his (then) small daughter.
That was when human male and female roles seemed “set in concrete” during the 1950’s, and I believe that he wanted his daughter to see that there were other ways of doing things.
In that situation, anthropomorphism was a useful tool, and not at all “ridiculous”.
To answer your question: It is a fairly big leap from that observation to your conclusion, (and I certainly didn’t make that leap!)
October 10th, 2006 at 11:40 am
Kokako for me this year. Beautiful song.
I highly recommend a trip to Tiritiri Matangi island, by the way. I thought that the birds sounded great. Really helped drive home what we’re missing, what with over 90% of the native forest gone combined with loads of various predators roaming around. It would be lovely to see more “mainland islands”.
November 27th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Howcome (he says calling out into cyberspace!), Frog hasn’t shown any interest in our native plants and animals or places since this post (on behalf of FOrest and Bird and in September). With the exception of climate change, straight ecological issues don’t seem to register on the Green party’s agenda anymore - how unfortunate. According to the Green website there hasn’t been a speech on “conservation” since May.
howcome the report outlining the worldwide collapse of fisheries by 2048 didn’t even raise a ripple? SOme of us voters actually rely on the Green Party to keep these issues topical and debated in the mainstream, some of us would like to see them receive similar coverage to anti-smacking and the exclusive brethren. Some of us really need to know that the Greens are sticking their necks out for our natural heritage.
any takers?
November 28th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
naturevision -
Good point! There has been frog’s post about - er - frogs, but nothing else on NZ native life forms for quite a while. Yep, it’s been all about the humans … and the frogs. Worse, it seems to have been a lot about some fairly questionable human specimens and their unethical doings.
We are a self-absorbed species! Which is probably part of the reason why this world is in the mess that it’s in.
I would like more positive stories, and more stories about the environment. Like - how is the Waste Minimisation Bill progressing? How is NZ’s plastic garbage heap evolving and mutating? How is the state of NZ’s native forests coming along? How are DoC’s wildlife recovery programmes doing, and what do the Greens think about it? And a story about what Nandor is doing these days would be cool too. Frog could also take a small leaf/lilypad from phil u’s site, which seems packed with interesting things. Eg the lovely things that some ice cream has been made from.
And - this year’s winner of the Bird of the Year competition was … the fantail.
November 28th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. It’s important to remember that frog does not equal the Greens, so the fact that I haven’t posted on native plants or animals doesn’t mean the Party hasn’t been giving them attention. Recently, Metiria’s conservation efforts have been focussed on whaling.
But you are right that it was remiss of me not to post about the fishstocks issue - hand duly slapped. Please feel free to use the feedback functions to send me post suggestions and topics (though I can’t promise to follow them all up!).