Blog

Cook Islands lizards are geckos and skinks. What is the difference? How did they arrive? Lizards in the Cook Islands are either day-active, glossy-scaled skinks or nocturnal, matt-skinned geckos. The geckos are famous for walking up glass windows and across ceilings, a feat achieved by minute, [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT During the summer of 1982-83 Rarotonga experienced a severe drought. Although some water continued to flow into the mains, there was only enough for those near the source – remote areas, like Nikao and Arorangi, were lucky to have a trickle after midnight when the upstream [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT This post is the second in a 2-part blog about The Long-tailed Cuckoo (Karavia, Urodynamis taitensis) which winters in tropical Polynesia and migrates to New Zealand in October and November to breed by duping other birds to incubate its eggs and raise its young. Part 2 [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Did the Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera) originate in the Americas? Was it in the Cook Islands when the first Polynesians arrived? The first Western record of Coconut Palms was in 545AD by Cosmos, an Egyptian, who saw them in India and Sri Lanka. Other reports followed, and [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Is it true that hermit-crabs develop into Coconut Crabs? The Coconut Crab (Birgus latro) is the world’s largest land-crab, often reaching 5kg. They take 7-12 years to reach sexual maturity, and can live more than 50 years. They are nocturnal omnivores, with a [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Turtle tourism has become a popular year-round activity in Rarotonga, with both Government and civil society groups working to make it safer for turtles and people. The industry is built around “resident” Green and Hawksbill Turtles. Recently, Te Ipukarea Society [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Ten years ago, on 24th April 2007, Air Rarotonga flew 27 Kura (Rimatara Lorikeets, Vini kuhlii) on a direct flight from Rimatara to Ātiu, where the bird had been absent for 200 years. This was the first transboundary reintroduction of a bird in the Pacific and was reported [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The ancient Polynesians brought many plants into Polynesia from Melanesia and Asia. Was this the source of the Bottle Gourd or did it come from the Americas? In the Cook Islands there are 39 useful, or formerly useful, plants that were purposefully introduced by the [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Frigatebirds are the largest seabirds residing in the Cook Islands, with wingspans of 180-220cm. They are uniformly black above, and black or black with a white breast below; their wings are long, angled, and sharp tipped; their tails are long, and deeply split into two [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The Cook Islands is fifteen small islands (total land area 240km²), scattered over an area approaching the size of Western Europe, in the tropical South Pacific. Although the 18,000 residents, almost all Polynesian, carry New Zealand passports, the country has been [Continue reading →]

A recent newspaper story about a Green Turtle showed a Hawksbill Turtle in the photograph. What is the difference? Three species of marine turtle have been recorded in the Cook Islands: the Green Turtle, the Hawksbill Turtle, and the Loggerhead Turtle. Each has an oval shell (or carapace) covered [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Laughing Gulls Seagulls are such common seabirds in New Zealand, Australia and America, that it always comes as a surprise for visitors to find no seagulls in the Cook Islands, assuming they ignore the two plastic ones at the Deli in Foodland. Although seagulls seem like the [Continue reading →]

The Pacific Pigeon (Rupe, Ducula pacifica) is the largest forest bird of the Cook Islands. It is dark green on the upper wings and back, with a pale grey neck, head and underside. The adult has a prominent lump on top of its beak. The sexes are identical in appearance. The pigeon has two [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The Cook Islands Fruit-Dove (Kūkupa, Ptilinopus rarotongensis) lives only on the islands of Rarotonga and Ātiu, making it a 2-island endemic of the Cook Islands. It was recorded on Ma‘uke in the 1820s but was lost sometime before 1970 – cause unknown. It was also in [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Our largest native butterfly is the Monarch Butterfly(Pepe Renga, Danaus plexippus) which is present on all the Southern Group islands. It is orange and black, with a wingspan to 10cm. It is usually seen near the Red Cottonweed(Tirika, Asclepias curassavica), a wayside weed. [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Rarotonga has one of the last pristine native-forests in Polynesia. The ancient Polynesian settlers removed the forest on the lower hills and as these became infertile they developed into the Fernlands. After European Contact, especially after 1823, many new plants were [Continue reading →]

Gerald McComack, CINHT Frogfishes are a family of fishes that look like misshapen toads – hence the name frogfishes. They are usually less than 20cm long, with some species less than 5cm in total length. They are sedentary ambush-feeders. Unsuspecting prey are attracted to a small beacon on [Continue reading →]

Gerald McComack, CINHT It is planned to reintroduce the endangered Rimatara Lorikeet (‘Ura, Vini kuhlii) to Ātiu in the Cook Islands from Rimatara in French Polynesia in July 2007 to establish a reserve population. The programme is being implemented by four organisations: the Cook Islands Natural [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT In the CI News (13 May 2006) Sue Ngatokorua described a new bird on Mangaia, and the author suggested it might be a Chestnut-breasted Mannikin (Lonchura castaneothorax). In late May Peter Ngatokorua, who provided the original information for the news article, took Ian Karika [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The Long-tailed Cuckoo (Karavia, Urodynamis taitensis) winters in tropical Polynesia and migrates to New Zealand in October and November to breed by duping other birds to incubate its eggs and raise its young. This post explores its behaviour in the Cook Islands and New [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The Ātiu Swiftlet (Kōpeka, Aerodramus sawtelli) lives only on Ātiu. They roost and nest inside totally dark caves, where they navigate by echolocation. They emerge at dawn to fly continuously after flying-insects and they rest only if they return to their cave. With a [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Inshore sea-snakes are common on and around the reefs of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Niue, but have never been recorded in the Cook Islands. The snake-like creatures in our lagoons are scaleless fish in the Snake-eel Family. Snake-eels differ externally from sea-snakes in having [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The Cook Islands’ biodiversity database lists 650 species of marine bony-fishes. In looking at the distribution of fishes across the Pacific it is obvious that there must be at least another hundred to be recorded locally. The Trust is always interested in information [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT We built a small hotel to study the behaviour of the local Leaf-cutter Bee, which usually nests around March or April. The hotel had three 12mm holes about 50mm long drilled to overlap two blocks of wood so that separating them would open the holes for inspection. As a [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT In 2010 scientists studied the DNA of Rarotonga’s largest skink and concluded that it was a new species, unique or endemic to Rarotonga. In February they named it Emoia tuitarere – Māori for wanderer, stranger, alien or sailor. For an English name we’ll call it the [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Introduction Dengue Fever epidemics have been reported in the tropics of Africa, Asia and the Americas since 1780. It was a non-fatal disease with a very high fever and intense joint/muscle pain. It was not until the 1950s, in Southeast Asia, that dengue became associated [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT Soviet illegal whaling The ‘Aluet’ (Aneyt), a Soviet Union factory ship, 1958. Photo by Yulia Ivashchenko.I came to Rarotonga in 1980 and over the next few years periodically saw a humpback or two. At that time Ron Powell and George Cowan told me that humpbacks [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The myna is locally much loathed as a pest, yet it arrived in the early 1900s with such high hopes as the “farmer’s friend”. We follow its triumphant march from India to many countries, including the Cook Islands. The “farmer’s friend” The Common Myna is indigenous to [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT On the 30th of August, Maureen Goodwin saw two unusual birds on her inland Muri lawn. She Googled and identified them as Australian Southern Lapwings rather than the Northern due to the black ‘ei kakī (collar). Over the next few days, the birds fed, ran over the lawn, and [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, NHT The inland mountains of Rarotonga maintain one of the most pristine tropical forests in the Central South Pacific. The biodiversity crowning glory of the inland forest is in the Cloud Zone, which is recognised by the occurrence of two particular ferns. Depending upon the [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT The largest spiders in the Cook Islands are the two huntsman spiders: the Brown Huntsman (Heteropoda venatoria), and the Noble Huntsman (Heteropoda nobilis). Their long slender legs have a span to about 12cm, although they have relatively small bodies – to 3cm long. [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT. The lunar month calendar of the Cook Islands is the arāpō or “path of the nights”, and the lunar year calendar is the nga tino marama. The 13-month lunar year or annual calendar was difficult to keep synchronised with the seasons. It was abandoned soon after the [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT. Lunar calendars are popular in Polynesia as guides for fishing and planting. In most cases they consist of a series of 30 nights with names (named-nights) that are applied without deviation, except for the 30th night, which can be dropped to ensure the next cycle starts on [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published Cook Islands News (5th June 2021), here (6th June 2021) Residents often talk about Cook Islands biodiversity, but few have discovered as many unrecorded species as 6-year-old Keanui Selam.  His recent insect-catching expeditions led to the [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published Cook Islands News (29 May 2021),  updated here (29 May 2021) In an article concerning the possibility of seabed nodule mining in the Cook Islands (Cook Islands News 27 March), Te Ipukarea Society wrote “We are confident that further research [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust Booklet published 2016. Available here 28 April 2021 The Trust’s booklet “Cook Islands Seabed Minerals – a precautionary approach to mining” was published in 2016 after three years of research. The booklet provides baseline [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published (14 April 2021), short version CI News (14 April 2021)   The Pacific Golden Plover, or Tōrea, is our most common Alaskan migrant. It is conspicuous on larger grassy areas during the summer and most are now in their dramatic breeding [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published CINews (24 Feb. 2021), updated. The following article answers Te Ipukarea Society (TIS) criticisms (CI News 20 February) of the author’s article on the possible impacts of seabed mining on nodule-associated benthic megafauna (CI News 11 [Continue reading →]

Joseph Brider, Natural Heritage Trust. First published online (19 Feb 2021). What do Japanese Sago-palms, Queen Sago-palms and Cardboard Palms all have in common? Well… they are NOT palms, they are all Cycads! The ‘palm’ reference comes from the shape of their leaves and [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published CI News 11 Feb. 2021, last update 23 Mar. 2021. This article discusses the likely impact of nodule mining on the megafauna associated with nodules in the South Penrhyn Basin (SPB), from Penrhyn southward to Aitutaki and Palmerston. This [Continue reading →]

Joseph Brider, Natural Heritage Trust. First published online (16 Feb 2021). Scattered throughout the Rarotonga inland forest are our Tree-ferns, known locally as Panga. These plants are not trees, they are ferns which have evolved a trunk-like stem to lift their leaves up off the forest floor in [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published CI News 26 Sept. 2019, modified 10 Feb. 2021. In July 2019, the Greenpeace report “In Deep Water” warned: “By impacting on natural processes that store carbon, deep sea mining could even make climate change worse by releasing carbon stored in [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust First published CI News 14 November 2020, updated The Matariki or Pleiades is a cluster of several hundred stars. To the naked-eye the nine brightest stars form a distinctive, eye-catching group with a glowing background, a bit larger than a Full Moon. [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, Natural Heritage Trust Holidaymakers gather in the airport departure lounge to leave for home, and as the boarding time approaches they hear entertainer Jake Numanga announce somewhat solemnly “Well, it’s time to go”. During February and March, Golden Plovers or [Continue reading →]

Gerald McCormack, CINHT  06 Jan. 2021 The invertebrate biodiversity expedition on Raemaru encountered three unique Rarotonga insects, one undescribed, and of the seven locally-unrecorded species, only one was able to be identified. In December, Maja Poeschko and Kirby Morejohn joined the author and [Continue reading →]

Joseph Brider, Natural Heritage Trust First published CI News (19 Sept 2020) The Cook Islands Biodiversity and Ethnobiology Database lists nearly 650 species of insect and it is estimated we have around 1,300 species. We have found about 300 of the unrecorded insects, and are working to find and [Continue reading →]