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| A weka, a flightless bird found only here. |
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| Giant Kauri trees. |
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| One of 5 orcas where we swim! |
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| Off fishing. |
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| The catch - a snapper |
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| Home for dinner! |
New Zealand is very isolated country, the nearest land mass is Australia 1500 miles away. It has been isolated for a long time, when it split from the continent of Gondwanaland 130 million years ago there were no mammals on the earth. Men only arrived here in the last 1500 years and the only mammals were bats which had flown here. There are many animals which are not found anywhere else on earth as it has been isolated for so long. There is a small reptile descendant of the dinosaurs called a tuatara and a mouse sized insect called a weta. The most unusual animals are the birds, many of which are flightless, as there were no mammal predators they did not need to fly away from danger. One large, flightless bird was the giant moa which was nearly 3.5 meters tall. The first settlers, The Maoris, found these easy prey and good eating so there are none left today. Other flightless birds are also either extinct or threatened. The national bird of New Zealand, The kiwi is very rare although it is now protected. The kiwi has a round body covered in coarse feathers with strong legs and a long, distinctive bill with nostrils on the end for sniffing out food, it is the national emblem and the nickname for New Zealanders. The tui is a songbird that eats nectar and has a distinctive white bobble on it's chest. There is an alpine parrot, the only one in the world, called a kea. It lives in the mountains of South Island and has a liking for rubber! Many tourist cars and coaches have their windscreens wrecked as the keas tear rubber from the seal. Trees and plants are also very different here with forests of giant kauri tree and over 80 different types of tree fern, these are a very old type of tree and the 10 meter high silver tree fern is another national emblem. There is lots of marine life here as it is so isolated and there are many marine reserves where fishing is limited. We saw orcas, killer whales, around our swimming platform last week, everybody got out of the sea very quickly! They killed a dolphin and it's baby in a bay near us last year and nobody waited to see if they could tell a human from a dolphin. There are sting rays just off the beach, swimming along the bottom looking for shellfish and crabs and you often see squid looking up at you with their big eyes when you are snorkelling. Fishing is a very popular sport and we went out in a boat offshore and caught a large snapper which made a good dinner!
