The Blue Lorikeet (Kurāmo‘o) of Aitutaki27/04/2026Gerald McCormack, Director, CINHT The Blue Lorikeet (Vini peruviana) is a native bird of French Polynesia, formerly existing on about twenty islands in the Society Islands (including Tahiti) and the northern Tuamotu atolls. In recent years it has been lost from Tahiti and all the main [continue reading…]- Hummingbirds in the Cook Islands?27/04/2026Gerald McCormack, CINHT Sometimes in the evening bird-like creatures hover over flowers while probing them with a long slender beak. Are they hummingbirds? Although they look like the hummingbirds of books and films these creatures are actually large moths, known as hawk-moths or sphinx-moths. They [continue reading…]
- Our Family of Stinging Fishes23/04/2026The most venomous fishes in the Cook Islands are several Lionfishes and Scorpionfishes, and a Stonefish, which all belong to the Scorpionfishes family. All members of this family have poison glands associated with hollow fin-spines, especially the dorsal spines, to inject poisonous proteins [continue reading…]
- Searching for Rare Plants16/04/2026Gerald McCormack, CINHT It has long been hoped that pristine forests at the base of remote and almost inaccessible cliffs might have thriving populations of some of Rarotonga’s rarest plants – maybe even the Pilea, which has not been seen for 80 years. In July (2010) the Natural Heritage [continue reading…]
- Polynesian Dogs16/04/2026Gerald McCormack, CINHT What did Polynesian Dogs look like? After Europeans arrived in Polynesia their dogs interbred with and rapidly replaced the docile Polynesian Dogs. The only preserved specimen is of a hunting dog collected in 1876 from southern South Island NZ. White was the favourite colour [continue reading…]
- Ātiu – the “land of birds”14/04/2026Gerald McCormack, CINHT Mariri was the first settler of Ātiu, probably around 1300AD, and he called the island ‘Enua Manu, “land of animals”, in response to the great abundance of animals. The oral traditions do not define the type of animals, and it is commonly thought they were birds, [continue reading…]
- Notable Species – 2024/2513/04/2026Gerald McCormack, CINHT The Cook Islands Biodiversity and Ethnobiology Database (CIBED) has been online since 2003 through the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. After several years of restructuring, it reopened in 2023 for the addition of new species at its new home address: [continue reading…]
