New Zealand Wildlife and Nature Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which cushion plants of the high, dry screes and fellfields of the South Island mountains form dense grey or white hummocks that, from a distance, are often mistaken for grazing animals?

Question 2

New Zealand is a world leader in which conservation technique, having cleared rats, cats, pigs, goats and other pests from more than 100 offshore islands, from tiny rocks up to Campbell Island at over 11,000 hectares?

Question 3

Which slender black wading bird, breeding almost entirely in the braided rivers and wetlands of the Mackenzie Basin, is regarded as the world's rarest wading bird, with the wild population once down to about 23?

Question 4

Which small brown native owl, named in English for its two-note call, is the only owl native to New Zealand still surviving, after a larger species went extinct in the early twentieth century?

Question 5

Which extinct wattlebird, in which the male had a short straight bill and the female a long curved one, had white-tipped black tail feathers so prized that a British royal visitor wearing one in 1901 set off a collecting craze?

Question 6

Which glossy blue-black forest songbird, with two curled white feather tufts at its throat, produces a wildly varied song of chimes, clicks, wheezes and mimicry and has two voice boxes?

Question 7

Which New Zealand reptile is the only surviving member of an order, distinct from lizards and snakes, that was widespread in the age of the dinosaurs, and retains a light-sensitive parietal spot on the top of its head?

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About New Zealand Wildlife and Nature

How well do you know New Zealand's wildlife and nature -- the flightless and forgotten birds, the bats and lizards and ancient frogs, the trees and ferns of the bush, and the story of the country's islands, extinctions and rescues? This quiz has one hundred questions in four packs of twenty-five, written the way people search: what is a kakapo, why is the kea a problem, what is the only native land mammal, why did the moa die out, what is 1080.

The answer is always one of four choices of the same kind, and the question never gives it away. A short note after each answer adds the figures, the range and the background.

The first pack covers birds: the kiwi, kakapo, kea and takahe; the tui, bellbird, kereru and fantail; the morepork, weka and pukeko; the kokako, black robin, royal albatross and yellow-eyed penguin; and the lost moa and Haast's eagle. The second pack covers everything else that moves: the bats, the tuatara, the live-bearing lizards, the tadpole-free native frogs, Hector's dolphin and the sea lion, the giant weta and glowworm, the carnivorous Powelliphanta snail, the katipo spider and the huhu grub, the longfin eel and whitebait, and the introduced possums, stoats, deer and rats. The third pack covers plants: the kauri and its dieback, the podocarps and the beeches, the silver fern and the nikau palm, the cabbage tree, pohutukawa and rata, harakeke and manuka, the bat-pollinated wood rose, the giant mountain buttercup, the vegetable sheep, and the weeds from pampas to wilding pines. The fourth pack covers the bigger picture: the dawn chorus and 1080, the beech mast cycle, the Pink and White Terraces and the Waimangu Geyser, the braided rivers and tussocklands, the subantarctic islands and the island sanctuaries from Tiritiri Matangi to Codfish Island, Zealandia in Wellington, and the takahe, black robin and kiwi rescues.

Some of the questions carry a photograph of a habitat or place tied to the question, chosen so it does not give the answer away. Every fact has been checked.