One Night at Mahakirau Forest Estate

Three Archey’s frogs, five Hochstetter’s frogs, three Coromandel striped geckos, and one forest gecko… all seen in less than a 24 hour period! Whenever we visit Sara and Ro out at Mahakirau Forest Estate, we are always spoilt with wildlife encounters.

Move Over Lucas – Meet the Polkadot Jumping Spider

My Great Uncle, Peter, kindly gifted me a new flash unit as a Christmas present. Despite being desperate to use it, we have been so busy with fieldwork and house renovations that now, several months later, I have only just managed to have my first real play. Meeting the Polkadot Jumping Spider During some downtime…

A Rare and Elusive Species: The Coromandel Striped Gecko [Toropuku “Coromandel”]

…only 28 individuals have been identified and recorded up until 12th November 2014. I am not aware of any updates to the database, but know that additional animals have been found since. I can be sure of this as Emma and I with our wildlife-spotting friends, Sara and Ro, came across two presumably new individuals that night!

Hochstetter’s Frog – 1 of the 4 Native New Zealand Frog Species

We had been instructed by our knowledgeable friends that if we were to turn over a few stones we would be in luck. No word of a lie, a few stones later we had found our first Hochstetter’s.

Meeting Archey’s Frog – The World’s Most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) Amphibian Species

I need not tell you how excited I was to visit some friends residing in one of the only places in the world where I could get to see the world’s most evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered amphibian species, the Archey’s Frog.