ellerykr's Favorites

The first time I had ever seen this, i videoed the entire event as well from entry to exit. It was as if this species swims all the time. I sent it to a frogmouth expert and she had never seen that before. The bird chose to swim and flew away very easily after its swim. There appeared to be no explanation for the bird swimming as it was not particularly hot or anything unusual.

King tides and big swells earlier in the week had smashed the spit and there was hardly any driftwood in the nesting area. There was one obvious pair with the male protecting a very exposed scrape that had no eggs in it yet. In addition to the pair there were two other dotterels, one of which was the most chubby I've ever seen!

2 then 4 kereru chasing each other around various trees. they separated, one flew down into blackwoods by bamboo, one flew through and over B's paddocks doing 2 display flights in a row up towards pine trees. one in a poplar by '9 count', 2 went into fruit tree next door...
at least 5 kereru, but maybe more, it's so hard to keep track of who is who when they are flying all over the place, in and out of sight and when they are carrying on like this, others join in so quickly.
one seemed different in colour on neck, different angles, different trees though maybe it was just the lighting and angle

I was honored to meet this rare and impressive species in wild, the largest insect in New Zealand, also the largest species in genus Deinacrida. A adult male Auckland tree weta just likes a baby when it compared with this giant weta.

trout eggs? native? seen attached under a chert rock in Hihi Stream, Kauaeranga Valley. after photos they were carefully replaced.

their eyes had a really bright gold colour.

3 or 4mm in size i guess

Hi,
I found this Ground Beetle (not sure of species) with many smaller creatures on its back and underneath it. Are these creatures its young or parasites? It was also walking around in the daytime, which seemed odd.

Female native parasitic wasp. I'm not particularly good at insect ID, so some extra opinions would be helpful. Extremely sizeable. Sat around on a mountain beech tree in a rather sparsely-wooded area with dried peat soil. Location data is rather vague due to not having GPS on that particular trip up the valley.

Seen on the main track in the Nina Valley, Lewis Pass.