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 ...
Explore the science concepts that underpin knowledge and understanding about birds and their structure, function and adaptations. The New Zealand Ministry of Education’s Building Science Concepts ...
He tohu te whakarerekētanga o te korihi a ngā manu kāore e tika ana tētahi āhuatanga mō te tangata whenua i te Waitākere. Rights: Onco p53, CC BY 4.0 Te rāhui i te Waitākere He āhuatanga o te ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
The kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae), also called kūkū, kūkupa, wood pigeon or simply New Zealand pigeon, is endemic and one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most valuable assets when it comes to ...
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 ...
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. Rights: The University of Waikato Te Whare ...
These interactive resources are all about takahē as well as supporting year 12 biology assessment AS91158.
Choose a mission and then successfully build and launch a satellite that can help gather the data required. Select here for additional information on using this interactive simulation.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Different wing sizes and shapes allow fliers to have specific flight capabilities. Match birds and aircraft with similar capabilities.
In this activity, students classify the different types of adaptations that New Zealand native birds have. By the end of this activity, students should be able to: classify adaptations of birds ...
