New Zealand is world famous for its unique birdlife. In our resources on conserving our native birds, we look at the issues surrounding the conservation of some of our threatened bird species ...
One of the requirements for heavier-than-air flying machines is a structure that combines strength with light weight. This is true for birds as well as planes. Birds have many physical features ...
A bird is designed for flight. The combination of light weight, strength and shape, as well as precision control, is largely responsible for giving birds their special ability for sustained ...
New Zealand separated from Gondwana around 65 million years ago. Due to the geographical isolation and a lack of ground-dwelling predators, our birds evolved unique characteristics. Flight was ...
You can tell a great deal about how a bird lives or what a plane has been designed for just from its wing shape and size. Wings of both birds and planes determine how they might perform or what ...
An ecosystem consists of all of the organisms living within an area and the interactions between them and the physical environment. All ecosystems, whether they are marine, freshwater or located ...
The takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri) is an endangered species and classed as nationally vulnerable under the New Zealand Threat Classification System. The takahē is a flightless bird found only in New Zealand. It was ...(Porphyrio
In this interactive, students compare the flight capabilities of planes with birds. You will need the Adobe Flash Player to view this.
New Zealand is home to a wide variety of water fowl. Water fowl is the common name for the Anatidae, the family of birds that includes ducks, geese and swans. Most of the Anatidae in New Zealand ...
These interactive resources are all about takahē as well as supporting year 12 biology assessment AS91158.
The takahē is a large, flightless bird – the largest living rail bird in the world. Rails are a family of ground-living birds and live on every continent except Antarctica. Takahē are endemic to ...
Takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri) once lived throughout the South Island. Their original habitats were the bushy edges of lowland swamps and rivers. Today’s remnant takahē population lives in the harsh environment of the ...(Porphyrio
Have you ever wanted to fly? To soar above valleys and mountains, cities and oceans, feeling the wind whipping against your face? Flight has fascinated humans for as long as we have looked ...
Birds are categorised as endemic, native or introduced. The slide show gives examples of some of the different types of birds we have in New Zealand. Alternatively, teachers see below for ...
Flowers are not on plants just to make them look pretty. They are there as a vital part of a flowering plant’s life cycle. Not all plants have flowers, find out what flowering plants are and how ...
Antarctica is not just a land of ice and snow – it is the coldest, driest climate on earth. When we say the word ‘desert’, we might imagine sand and camels, but in fact a desert is any place that ...
New Zealand native birds have been greatly affected by predation. For millions of years, they lived in an environment without natural predators. Many species developed traits like flightlessness ...
Takahē are one of New Zealand’s conservation success stories. Their conservation status has moved from extinct to nationally vulnerable in the 70 years since they were rediscovered in the ...
In this activity, students build a food web that represents the New Zealand bush ecosystem. Students use images of organisms within the ecosystem to explore the relationships between them. By the ...
This New Zealand-based citizen science project aims to collect data about the types and numbers of common garden birds in our own backyard. This is done once annually during a particular window ...
Takahē once lived throughout Te Waipounamu South Island. Māori reported that their night cry sounded like the striking of two pieces of pounamu. Habitat loss and hunting led to a steep decline ...
Scientifically, takahē have been something of a mystery. For several decades, it was assumed that takahē were extinct in both the North and South Islands – until being rediscovered in 1948. There ...
In this activity, students explore the importance of wing shape and size and how this determines the flight capabilities of birds and planes. By the end of this activity, students should be able ...
