New Zealand Wildlife and Nature Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which large white seabird with a golden head and black wingtips forms dense mainland breeding colonies at Cape Kidnappers in Hawke's Bay and at Muriwai near Auckland, plunge-diving for fish from a height?

Question 2

Under which long-running kiwi conservation method are eggs or young chicks taken from the wild, hatched and reared in captivity until the birds weigh about a kilogram and can fend off a stoat, then released back to the forest?

Question 3

Which government agency, set up in 1987 by merging parts of several older departments, manages about a third of New Zealand's land area, along with a network of roughly 950 backcountry huts and the Great Walks?

Question 4

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?

Question 5

Which family of introduced predators, comprising stoats, ferrets and weasels, was released across New Zealand from the 1880s against the advice of naturalists in a doomed effort to control rabbits, and instead became a leading killer of native birds?

Question 6

Which New Zealand bat, unusual for hunting on the forest floor as well as in the air, is the sole pollinator of the leafless, ground-dwelling parasitic plant known as the wood rose?

Question 7

Aerial hunting from helicopters, and later live capture for farming, grew in the mid-twentieth century into a major industry aimed at reducing the browsing damage done by which large introduced herbivore in the mountains and forests?

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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.