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One of the perks of my work is that I get to visit some beautiful places and get to see some amazing animal species. For three years, I visited New Caledonia to work with the incredible New Caledonian crows, a species that crafts and uses sticks and hooks as tools to extract grubs from rotten tree trunks. Here are some images of these crows, and a couple other endemic bird species that can be seen in the Grande-Terre island.
This year I spent two months living and working in New Caledonia, where I studied New Caledonian crows. These incredibly intelligent birds use tools in the wild to retrieve grubs from crevices in trees. Our work with them involves catching them in the wild and training them in captivity for a few months out of the year. They surprised me with their fast learning and incredible flexibility to solve problems.
During my time in New Caledonia I also had a chance to check out a few touristic spots, including a paradisiacal deserted island, a beautiful double waterfall, and a luxuriant tropical forest. The trip involved a fair bit of bird watching. Below are some of my favourite images of the wildlife and landscapes of New Caledonia's Grande Terre.
Earlier this year, I spent a couple of months working with the fantastic kea parrots (Nestor notabilis) at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, in Christchuch. They are incredibly charismatic birds with an insatiable curiosity and a sense of humour. They play with everything they can find but have extremely powerful beaks, which makes them infamous with the locals, mostly for their love of chewing on car rubber fittings and television antennae.
Hoping to see wild keas in their natural environment, we drove to Arthur's Pass National Park. It was a fantastic day and we were lucky enough to see fantastic views, an enormous flock of sheep, and plenty of cheeky wild kea.
Below are a few of my favourite photos from the day trip. Enjoy!
