New Zealand Wildlife and Nature Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which open, golden, wind-rippled vegetation, of large bunching grasses that intercept fog and feed water slowly into rivers, covers much of the South Island high country above the former forest line and in the dry inland basins?

Question 2

Which irregular natural event, in which southern beech trees flower and set seed heavily all at once every few years, sets off a plague of mice and then of stoats that forces conservation managers to plan large-scale predator control in advance?

Question 3

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 4

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 5

Which New Zealand insect, whose name means god of ugly things, is among the heaviest insects in the world, with a big female topping 35 grams, and now survives naturally only on Little Barrier Island?

Question 6

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 7

Which small island in the Hauraki Gulf, once farmed down to grass, was replanted by tens of thousands of volunteers from the 1980s and stocked with rare birds, and is now held up as a model of open-to-the-public island restoration?

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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.