Does free speech include anti-vaxer sentiments?

May 6, 2017 • 11:00 am

A reader named Jeannie has sent me the following email:

Today I read an article in the Washington Post about a measles outbreak in the Somali community in Minnesota.
The Somalis are concerned about autism and anti-vaxxers brought in Andrew Wakefield to caution them.
In the light of your recent essays on free speech, what would you do about this sort of thing where the message of anti-vaxxers is causing the illness of so many.  Andrew Wakefield is unrepentant.   Could you address this on your website?
And yes, Jeannie, I’ll respond briefly. First, though, some data. Here’s the vaccination rate in Minnesota as reported by the Post; the decline in the non=Somali rate is likely statistically insignificant (they don’t say), but the rate in the Somali community is surely significant:
and a bit of the article:

 Salah [a Somali-American whose two unvaccinated children got measles, with one becoming seriously ill] no longer believes that the MMR vaccine triggers autism, a discredited theory that spread rapidly through the local Somali community, fanned by meetings organized by anti-vaccine groups. The activists repeatedly invited Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the modern anti-vaccine movement, to talk to worried parents.Immunization rates plummeted, and last month the first cases of measles appeared. Soon there was a full-blown outbreak, one of the starkest consequences of an intensifying anti-vaccine movement in the United States and around the world that has gained traction in part by targeting specific communities.

. . . Minnesota’s Somali community is the largest in the country. The roots of the outbreak there date to 2008, when parents raised concerns that their children were disproportionately affected by autism spectrum disorder. A limited survey by the state health department the following year found an unexpectedly high number of Somali children in a preschool autism program. But a University of Minnesota study found that Somali children were about as likely as white children to be identified with autism, although they were more likely to have intellectual disabilities.

Around that time, health-care providers began receiving reports of parents refusing the MMR vaccine.

As parents sought to learn more about the disorder, they came across websites of anti-
vaccine groups. And activists from those groups started showing up at community health meetings and distributing pamphlets, recalled Lynn Bahta, a longtime state health department nurse who has worked with Somali nurses to counter MMR vaccine resistance within the community.

At one 2011 gathering featuring Wakefield, Bahta recalled, an armed guard barred her, other public health officials and reporters from attending.

Fear of autism runs so deep in the Somali community that parents whose children have recently come down with measles insist that measles is preferable to risking autism. One father, who did not want his family identified to protect its privacy, sat helplessly by his daughter’s bed at Children’s Minnesota hospital last week as she struggled to breathe during coughing fits.

I think you can guess my response to Jeannie’s question. Yes, banning the discredited Wakefield from speaking could have reduced the rate of measles infection. But you can’t ban Wakefield from speaking and at the same time not ban the many anti-vaxer websites. It is in fact the public rise of anti-vaxer sentiments that has led to counterspeech asserting, with data, that the preservative thimerosal is not a danger to children (it’s not even in most vaccines), and that vaccination doesn’t cause autism.

If we ban Wakefield’s anti-science sentiments, we must also ban the faith-healing sentiments of Christian Scientists and other groups who claim that disease is a result of either impure thoughts or bad thoughts. Many children have died from following this form of faith healing, as I show in Faith Versus Fact. (This doesn’t mean, of course, that doctors have to withhold medical care from children of such parents, though it’s allowed in a distressingly larger number of states.)

If you ban Wakefield because of possible harm, you must ban all “hate speech”, including Holocaust denialism, because it might lead to future harm, like the killing of Jews. You must ban climate-change denialists because, in the end, acting on their beliefs could destroy our planet.

There is nobody we can trust to decide which speech should be banned because it’s “harmful”. The best thing to do is allow people to say what they want (of course, nobody is obliged to give Wakefield a platform), and counter anti-science sentiments with good science. If people went to the Centers for Disease Control site, for instance, they’d quickly find that vaccination is safe. Likewise, virtually all doctors will tell parents to get their children immunized.

My position on freedom of speech has never altered, and it’s the position taken by the U.S. courts. Nobody should be banned by the government from saying anything they want so long as it isn’t calling for immediate violence. Nor can speech lead to a climate of harassment in the workplace.  Finally, this doesn’t mean that anybody can set up a soapbox anywhere and give speeches. There are procedures and permits for such public speech.

It also does not mean that colleges must give a platform to every Nazi and crackpot, nor that newspapers or the media must allow such people to write columns. It does mean that if groups in a state university or other public organization invites a speaker, it is unconstitutional for those who did not extend the invitation (like a college administration) to rescind the invitation. Even private organizations shouldn’t do that, for nobody can be trusted to decide what speech should be censored or who should be “de-platformed”.

Further, there are good reasons to allow even some crackpots to speak. I’ve long said that Holocaust denialists can and should be allowed to speak at colleges, for hearing their arguments is the best way to inspire you to find out why they’re wrong. I myself have benefited in this way.  Hearing views you think are too odious to even be countenanced—like no woman should be allowed to have an abortion, or that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry—still allows us to examine our own opposing beliefs and refine and strengthen them. (And sometimes change them, as happened during the U.S. civil rights movement.) For an example of someone who has refined her pro-choice thinking in light of anti-abortion sentiments, I draw your attention to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s incisive article, “A defense of abortion.”

In the end, if speech that seems odious takes place, we always have the right to publicly demonstrate or produce counter-speech. Censorship of Andrew Wakefield won’t stop anti-vaxers from circulating their lies, which are best fought by public counter-reaction. Censorship does not end harmful or bigoted thoughts; it only drives them underground.

In this respect America is lucky—and unique. As Neil Gaiman said:

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don’t have that.

Readers are of course invited to disagree civilly, giving their own views of what speech should be censored.

 

Caturday felid trifecta: The Mother Lode of cat gifs, a rescued cougar cub, and a dog that saves cats.

May 6, 2017 • 9:30 am

Pinterest has a huge page of kitten gifs for your delectation; I’ll give just three:

Kitten fight! (no kittens were harmed in the making of this video):

Feeding time:

Mom scares her kittens:

 

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From Z00Borns, a video and photos of rescued five-week-old cougar cub:

A tiny, orphaned Cougar cub has briefly taken up residence behind the scenes at the Oregon Zoo’s veterinary medical center.

The cub, described as “loud and rambunctious” by zoo vet staff, was recently rescued by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers, after a landslide separated the young Cougar from its mother. After a short stopover in Portland, the cub will be headed to a new permanent home at the Minnesota Zoo.

“It was the victim of a landslide that occurred on Sunday [April 23] in Pend Oreille County,” said Rich Beausoleil, WDFW Bear and Cougar specialist. “A member of the public found it the day after in the mud and called WDFW.”

. . . “In most cases, we try to arrange for orphaned cubs to go directly to their new homes,” [zookeeper Michelle] Schireman said. “But in special situations, and depending on whether we have space, we sometimes take care of them at the zoo until their health has stabilized. It’s a lot to ask of our staff, but everyone here is incredibly dedicated to helping wildlife. Our vet staff and keepers have been taking shifts to make sure this little guy receives around-the-clock care with feedings every four hours.”

Now why are the cubs spotted (like most wild felids) but lose their spots when older? If the cubs must be camouflaged, but adults not (they have no predators), why bother to lose the spots? Evolutionary inertia?

********

Finally, the Guardian has the story of Molly, a dog that deserves to have no asterisk as it’s trained to rescue cats:

Molly is the world’s first trained cat detection dog. Her job is to rescue missing moggies. We had been looking for a dog with a particular temperament and intelligence to join our team of pet detectives for 18 months. We had scouts out and had spoken to the country’s top breeders.

. . . We needed a quick learner; one small enough to fit into the nooks and crannies cats hide in. Mostly, we needed a dog with no desire whatsoever to chase cats.

I came up with the idea in 2014. I had been doing the job for 20 years and my business, Pet Detectives, was getting around 30 calls a week about missing cats. When cats go to ground, they go into a comatose-like state and if they are not found quickly, within a fortnight, they often don’t survive after being rescued.

 

I first met [Molly] in February 2016, at the home of Medical Detection Dogs, the charity that would help train her. We had already rejected 12 dogs without seeing them. Three others didn’t make it through initial training: one was too timid, one got car sick and the other was too inclined to chase.

. . . She had to be “cat-tested”, so we took her to a farm with a dozen cats to see if she would chase them. She didn’t even bark. Her focus was on interacting with her handler.

Her training took nine months with experts, including two doctors of canine behaviour. This had never been done before. She was a quick learner. The first phase was lab training, where we taught her to isolate scents. She then worked with a behavioural specialist who taught her to understand signals and commands. The final stage was teaching us to work together.

On assignments, Molly is trained to pick up cats’ scents from their bedding. When she finds the missing cat, she lies down to signal success, so as not to scare them, but you can see her trembling with excitement. She gets rewarded with her super-treat: black pudding.

Her first success was in February this year. A tri-coloured moggy had been sighted six miles from home on the roof of a garden shed. Molly quickly picked up her scent on the grass. I sent her across the back of 30 gardens until she started clawing at a fence. She charged across the lawn to a summer house and lay down. The cat was inside. The owners were over the moon and quite amazed by her.

. . . Molly has helped to rescue 11 cats so far, and our search success has increased by a third. She wears a fluorescent harness and has her own abseiling kit, which we once used to lower her over a 10ft wall. We’re getting special boots made to protect her feet in outbuildings where there may be nails or glass.

Colin Butcher and Molly: ‘She has helped to rescue 11 cats so far.’ Photograph: Mark Chilvers for the Guardian

h/t: Heather Hastie, Grania,

Readers’ wildllife photos

May 6, 2017 • 7:30 am

Reader Mark Sturtevant has sent some lovely arthropod photos with his notes (indented):

I am answering the call for more WWP’s.

First, a while back I had introduced a ginormous Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) that I had brought home from the field. ‘Mrs. Mantis’, as I called her, was always hungry and she kept me busy bringing home live prey for her to eat. These prey were usually Orthopterans by day, captured with my sweeping net, or moths by night, which were lured in by our porch light. Of course pictures were taken, and so here are some pictures of her eating a large katydid. I hope that showing these pictures is not considered unseemly. The capture itself happened so fast I had no time to get the camera ready for it. And I was wondering if she would be intimidated by the larger than usual prey! As usual, the first parts consumed were the thoracic region before she went on to other bits. I suppose this is to take out the major muscle groups so she can eat the rest without resistance.

While I was watching her eat, I became aware that I could also listen. There was a steady snik snik snik sound as she scissored without pause through cuticle. As shown in this next picture she even delicately ate the gut, but eschewed the gut contents. She otherwise ate every bit of this meal. Not a leg or piece of wing was dropped to the ground, which was unusual for her.

As shown in the last picture of Mrs Mantis, after a meal the insect will clean itself in a cat-like manner by licking its forelegs, and sometimes whisking the cleaned leg over their head. Although it may be admitted that mantises have some cat-like qualities, I think on balance they fail to be ‘honorary cats’. Among the missing requirements is cuteness. Although they have an alien beauty, there is really nothing very cute about them.

 In the next picture is an Eastern cicada killer (Sphecius speciosus), one of several that I found in the park. These are one of our largest wasps. Females are well known to prey upon periodical cicadas, paralyzing and carrying them off to be sequestered into a burrow with an egg. I did occasionally see the very large females, but they were always zooming off to somewhere. This is one of about a dozen males that were staking out a single area next to the visitor center. They were perching on tree branches and fence rails and chasing away rival males. This was evidently an area where one or more females were about to emerge, and the males were so obsessed with having a chance to mate that they pretty much ignored the human taking pictures.

It is always interesting to see new species, and that is pretty much guaranteed after driving several hundred miles away from home. The next species is a kind of paper wasp I had never seen before, the very handsome Polistes bahamensis:

Deep in the park at a road stop near a river, I came across a intimate pair of opilionids (harvestmen or “daddy longlegs”) that appear to belong to the genus Leiobunum. This has proved to be a complex group for more specific identification because of color variations among the many species. This is the first time I had seen opilionids mating, and as Chelicerate arthropods go these are a bit unusual since the male uses a specialized ‘intromittent organ’ to directly transfer a sperm packet to the female. You can see this appendage beneath them, extending between the pair.   :

And finally, the last picture shows a large longhorn beetle that audibly crash-landed onto our cabin porch at night. I believe this is the Thomas’ oak borer (Derobrachus thomasi), which can be distinguished from similar species in this group of big longhorns by various characters like the length of antennal segments in the vicinity of the very short third segment. Having been captured, this big beetle would never sit still for pictures, and so I resorted to chilling it down in the fridge for a time. This is a common trick, but a bit risky since some insects quickly succumb after even a short period of being cooled down. However, this beetle was scarcely affected. I managed to get in a few hurried pictures before it raised its elytra, unfolded a pair surprisingly large wings, and buzzed off in a dramatic and noisy exit that stirred the leaves in its wake.

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 6, 2017 • 6:30 am

Good morning! It’s a chilly Saturday in Chicago, but remains May 6.  It’s National Crepe Suzette day, but fuhgeddaboutit: I have a jar of gooseberry preserves to put on my toast:

Most Americans disdain the sour gooseberry, and its products aren’t widely available here, but a good gooseberry pie is nothing to be sniffed at! And, amazingly, it’s also International No Diet Day—to celebrate the abnegation of abstemious eating, Have some pie! The symbol of the holiday is a light blue ribbon, and I bet none of you see one.

On May 6,  1682, Louis XIV moved the French court to Versailles. On this day in 1840, the first adhesive postage stamp, the “Penny Black”, became valid for sending letters in Great Britain (see below). Featuring a portrait of Queen Victoria, the stamp lasted one year before being replaced by the Penny Red:

On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was opened to the public, and on May 6, 1915, Babe Ruth (still regarded by many as the best baseball player of all time), hit his first home run for the Boston Red Sox (if you’re a baseball maven, you’ll know his lifetime total). He was a pitcher at the time. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg Disaster occurred, with the zeppelin catching fire and crashing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killimg 36.  Exactly three years later, John Steinbeck got the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath.  On this day in 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. The current record for men is 3:43.13, set in 1999 by Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco, and for women is 4:12.56, set by the Russian Svetlana Masterkova in 1996. Here is the reduction of time over the years for men (Wilkipedia gives no figure for women), and there MUST be a limit because humans can’t run a mile in ten seconds:

Finally, on this date in 1994, the Channel Tunnel was officially opened.

Notables born on this day include Sigmund Freud and Robert Peary (both 1856), Rudolph Valentino (1895), Willie Mays (1931), Bob Seger (1945), and Tony Blair (1953). Those who died on this day include Henry David Thoreau (1862), Marlene Dietrich (1992), and Farley Mowat (2014). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is pretending to look for flowers:

A: What are you looking at?
Hili: Over there in the grass there could be  a clump of daffodils.
In Polish:
A: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Tam na łące powinna być kępa żonkili.

A lagniappe tweet found by Matthew Cobb:

https://twitter.com/landpsychology/status/860385852526120960

A python with an emoticon pattern

May 5, 2017 • 3:06 pm

To end the week, have a look at this “smiley-face” lavender albino ball python:

As Science Alert notes:

A selective python breeder has created an Emoji Ball Python snake after eight years of trying.

Justin Kobylka breeds snakes with unique patterns and sells them.

The patterns are caused by recessive mutations that do occur naturally, but it is extremely unlikely to happen in the wild.

The extremely rare snake could be sold for at least US $4,500 but Justin told Business Insider that he will keep this particular animal due to its “uniqueness”.

Such is the power of artificial selection, the analogue of natural selection that was described by Darwin thusly in the second edition of The Origin:

Breeders habitually speak of an animal’s organisation as something quite plastic, which they can model almost as they please.

Now it’s hard to imagine an environment in nature that would give smiley-faced snakes a selective advantage, but there are plenty of equally amazing results of natural selection, like making caterpillars resemble snakes:

North Carolina legislature passes bill allowing drivers to plow through protestors on streets

May 5, 2017 • 12:15 pm

It’s unbelievable what Republicans try to do when making law. They are overturning Obamacare simply to go after Obama—a move that will lead, foreseeably, to the deaths of thousands of Americans. But now the GOP in North Carolina has passed a bill that’s just as ludicrous and almost as dangerous.

What happened, according to multiple and credible sources (see, for instance, here, here, and here) is that the House wing of the North Carolina legislature passed a bill (HB 330) immunizing drivers from civil lawsuits who hit protestors in the streets. One of the impetuses for the bill was a protest that occurred recently in North Carolina, and HB330, which passed by a vote of 67-48, was of course introduced by a Republican, Representative Justin P. Burr.

Last year, people protesting the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by a Charlotte police officer blocked roadways during at-times chaotic protest-related activities.

“These people are nuts to run in front of cars like they do … and say, ‘Me and my buddy here are going to stop this two-and-a-half-ton vehicle,’” GOP state Rep. Michael Speciale said in support of the bill, The News & Observer reports. “If somebody does bump somebody, why should they be held liable?”

The bill does not allow drivers to deliberately target protestors, but, as far as I can see, if a driver simply drives through a crowd or protestors, killing or injuring some, that driver is immune from civil prosecution. I’m not sure about criminal prosecution on the grounds of reckless driving or other infractions, and perhaps a lawyer can weigh in here. But I suspect you’re free and clear legally and civilly.  What does seem clear is that the object is to eliminate protests in the streets, including ones that constitute civil disobedience. And the bill seems superfluous, anyway:

Democratic state Rep. Henry Michaux, however, points out North Carolina is one of just four states with a pure contributory negligence rule, which means it’s already impossible to collect a payout if the injured party is even 1 percent at fault for an accident.

Michaux, an African-American attorney, tells U.S. News the bill therefore would not give drivers additional protection from liability. Instead, he sees it as an unconstitutional invitation to mow down protesters or weave through parades, and he feels the motivation behind the bill may be racial.

“Who demonstrates more than people of color?” Michaux says. “It would give some folks the idea,” he says, to intentionally run over people “because you’ve got a group of black folks out here or a group of Latinos out here.”

WFAE points out other problems:

“We all know this is being done to try to make a point about protests,” said Democrat Greg Meyer. He’s just one of the lawmakers who saw a problem with this bill. “It is just going to embarrass us. There is no good reason to pass this bill.”

Even those in favor of the measure saw problems.

When first introduced this bill was incredibly broad. Amendments followed. One to make it clear it was just for protesters on the street, an earlier version could have included those on the sidewalk.

Another amendment made this bill only pertain to protesters who did not have a permit to be on the street. But there’s a problem with that, as pointed out by Democrat Pricey Harrison. “There is Supreme Court case law that there is a constitutional right to protest without a permit even in the streets when the protest is in rapid response to unforeseeable and recent events.”

Just like the events which Burr said spurred this proposed law.

Here’s a pdf of the bill, which will now be taken up by the state Senate:

It seems crazy to me to even consider such a bill. When there are people in the street—for whatever reason—you don’t drive over them unless you’re in fear for your own life. You can’t just kill protestors because you need to buy milk at the 7-11.

It is obvious to anyone that this is a way for North Carolina Republicans to both squelch protests and allow people to kill or injure protestors. And if you’re wondering if it’s mostly Republicans who did this, the answer is “yes”: the roll call is below. Only one Democrat voted for the bill and just five Republicans against it.

Things are in bad shape in what used to be one of the more enlightened Southern states. (The legislature is also gutting higher education in the state.)

h/t: Grania

A spider that mimics a beetle

May 5, 2017 • 10:00 am

Matthew Cobb sent me another remarkable case of mimicry, revealed in this tweet:

The link leads to an article on the Arachne.org.au site that gives this information under the heading “Coccorchestes ferreus Griswold, 1984 Beetle Mimicking Salticid”

This jumping spider is one of the most unusual of the jumping spiders found in Australia, having over time successfully adapted by mimicking a beetle. Many subtle and obvious features of the beetle have been assumed. This must have protected this genus and its species (mostly found in New Guinea) from predators, allowing its survival as a group. The specific name is from the Latin, ferreus, meaning of iron. The female body is shiny dark brown to black, body length to 3mm. The male was not known to Griswold in 1984 but has since been documented in Davies and Zabka 1989.

Note that “allowing its survival as a group” may be true, but selection was surely on individuals, not on groups (as the post could be taken to imply). There are other spiders in the genus that appear to mimic beetles.

Other views from the post:

Wildlife and other photos from New Zealand: Tiritiri Matangi Reserve

May 5, 2017 • 8:30 am

A few days before I regretfully left New Zealand, reader Gayle Ferguson took me on an all-day expedition to Tiritiri Matangi Island, a small (2.2 km² [1 square mile] reserve located on an island only about 3 km from the shore. Here’s where it is.

It is a reserve that was denuded by farming and logging, but then was recreated by planting native forest and transplanting native animals after denuding the island of predators (native birds also flew there from the mainland). Here’s what was done (from Wikipedia) after the island was designated a reserve in 1970: an enormous effort (I’ve bolded the birds and insects I saw, and there were others):

It was hoped that native forest would regenerate naturally, making the island a suitable habitat for native bird life, as it lacked introduced predators such as mustelids present on the mainland. However, afforestation seemed to be happening very slowly and a large number of volunteers were recruited to plant saplings and sow tree seeds. Over 250,000 native trees and shrubs of over 30 different species were planted in the revegetation project from 1984 to 1994.

The next intervention was eradication in 1993 of the Polynesian rat, known to Māori as kiore, which was destroying seedlings and competing with birds for food. The kiore were killed by an aerial drop of poisoned bait, which was controversial due to its lack of planning and the effect on other wildlife. For instance, 90% of pukeko on the island were killed.

Eighty-seven species of birds have been observed on or near the island. Eleven native species have been translocated to the island as part of the ongoing restoration project. These are kākāriki / red crowned parakeet, tīeke / North Island saddleback, pāteke / brown teal, pōpokotea / whitehead, takahē, little spotted kiwi, hihi / stitchbird, North Island kōkako, mātātā / fernbird, miromiro / North Island tomtit and tītipounamu / rifleman. Non-avian translocations include a reptile tuatara in 2003, Duvaucel’s gecko in 2006 and a large insect wetapunga in 2011. Non-native species present include the Australian brown quail. The success of the conservation project encouraged the creation of a number of similar projects around the Gulf, such as on Motuihe, Motuora and Motutapu. The closest land on the tip of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, Shakespear Regional Park has recently (2011) also become a mammalian pest-free fenced sanctuary, increasing immigration of the birds on Tiritiri to the nearby mainland.

This is the mainland from the island; you can see how close it is. That means that predators such as rats could invade, either by swimming or on the numerous pleasure boats that go to the island to visit the beaches.  There was once a rat that invaded the island, and it took weeks, and $50,000 (New Zealand) to find it and kill it. They used dogs, and knew that if that rat was a female who had offspring, you could kiss the native birds goodbye,

There is one ferry a day to the island, and you have to brush your feet when you arrive to remove any contaminants like the seeds of non-native plants.

Here’s Gayle, appropriately eating a Kit-Kat bar before our six-hour hike up and down the mountain. (As you may know, Gayle, who teaches at Massey University, rescues orphaned kittens, and has saved 25 of them, including Jerry Coyne the Cat, who now lives in Christchurch.)

A korimako, or New Zealand bellbird (Anthornis melanura), the only species in its genus. Its beautiful song was once a prominent part of the “dawn chorus” of New Zealand forests—something that can still be heard on Tiritiri, but elsewhere the forests are eerily and sadly silent. Captain Cook, who described that chorus before the species were destroyed, said this of the bellbird song: “It seemed to be like small bells most exquisitely tuned”.

But here–they’re back on Tiritiri and you can hear them as they flew around a nectar feeding station in my short video. Gayle sits right beside it taking photos:

Here’s one of the 24 species of Carmichaelia (New Zealand brooms). I have no idea which one it is.

Lovely ferns in the forest. The main trail starts at the dock and winds upward to the lighthouse that still sits atop Tiritiri. You must go on the trail with a guide in a small group (about four people); the guides are volunteers (ours was a local biology teacher), and are immensely helpful, knowledgable, and amiable.

Moth damage on a native New Zealand flax (probably Phormium tenax). The plant, endemic to New Zealand, had a variety of uses for the Maori people.

We saw giant wetas, one of the world’s largest insects, a flightless orthopteran in the genus Deinacrida.  They can weigh up to several ounces but average about  35 grams (a bit more than an ounce). They will fill the palm of your hand, and the species, hard to find elsewhere because of mammalian predation, was moved to Tiritiri in recent years. They are thriving there, but still not numerous, and they’re hard to spot as they hang out in the trees at head level. But we saw two! These photos don’t give an idea of their HUGENESS:

A female:

The same female, peering at me:

And two views of a male:

Rewarewa, or the New Zealand honeysuckle (Knightia excelsa), an endemic evergreen that has beautiful wood. It’s forbidden to log it, but you can find pieces made of windfall trees, driftwood, or pre-prohibition wood. I bought a rewarewa spoon at the Auckland Museum.

Rewarewa wood looks like this (not my photo, but from here):

A view toward Auckland from the island, with native cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) in the foreground:

Two photos of a very rare bird, the North Island kōkako (Callaeas wilsoni) with its distinctive blue wattles. It has a lovely song that resembles that of a bellbird.  The species is highly endangered by mammalian predation but attempts are being made to save it by sequestering it on predator-free islands like Tiritiri.

Here’s a better photo of a captive bird at the Mt. Bruce wildlife center. I’ve put up this photo before; it was taken by my host Phil Garnock-Jones:

Little Barrier Island from Tiritiri, also a nature reserve. Unlike Tiritiri, they are still eradicating introduced predators on this island, including feral cats, which of course makes me sad (but I see no alternative if they want to save native species).

Mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium, also called teatree).  The honey from its flowers is prized (and very expensive) for its supposed medicinal properties, but I gather they are fictitious:

A mānuka flower:

Two photos of nonendemic but native species, the pukeko or Australasian swamphen (Porphyrio melanotus), found in Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, and Indonesia.  It’s not endangered.

The flowers of the lovely native palm, the nīkau (Rhopalostylis sapida)—the only endemic palm. The Maori used it not only for food, but for thatching houses and making baskets and sandals:

The endemic New Zealand pigeon,  the kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae). It’s a large and beautiful frugivore (fruit-eater), and is threatened by hunting and habitat loss:

Lovely tree bark; I’m not sure what species (readers?), but perhaps honeysuckle (see above):

A tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae), also called the “parsonbird” because of the distinctive white tuft of feathers at its neck. They are fairly common and live in the gardens of several of my hosts. They look black at first, but under the right light, as below, you can see their gorgeous coloration (note the neck tuft):

Another view of a tui, showing that it looks black in the “wrong” light. The neck tuft is still visible, though.

A big volcano near Auckland; I can’t remember its name but readers can help. Auckland is surrounded by volcanos, some if them active.

A pretty tree trunk, but I don’t know the species (readers?):

Another rarity, foraging around the lighthouse: a flightless South Island takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri), superficially resembling the Dusky Moorhen shown above. It is very rare (263 birds are known to exist) and was once thought to be extinct, but—mirabile dictu—it was rediscovered. From Wikipedia:

It was thought to be extinct after the last four known specimens were taken in 1898. However, after a carefully planned search effort the bird was rediscovered by Geoffrey Orbell near Lake Te Anau in the Murchison Mountains, South Island, on 20 November 1948. The specific scientific name commemorates the Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter.

. . . The species is still present in the location where it was rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains. Small numbers have also been successfully translocated to five predator-free offshore islands, Tiritiri Matangi, Kapiti, Maud, Mana and Motutapu, where they can be viewed by the public. Additionally, captive takahē can be viewed at Te Anau and Pukaha/Mt Bruce wildlife centres. In June 2006 a pair of takahē were relocated to the Maungatautari Restoration Project. In September 2010 a pair of takahē (Hamilton and Guy) were released at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve – the first non-Department of Conservation institution to hold this species. In January 2011 two takahē were released in Zealandia, Wellington, and in mid-2015, two more takahē were released on Rotoroa Island in the Hauraki Gulf. There have also been relocations onto the Tawharanui Peninsula. In 2014 two pair of Takahe were released into Wairakei golf and sanctuary, a private fenced sanctuary at Wairakei north of Taupo, the first chick was born there in November 2015. At the beginning of 2013 there were 263 takahē accounted for, showing slow but steady growth over the previous few years.

Finally, the Tiritiri Manangi Lighthouse atop the island. Built in 1864, it’s still in operation, and is the oldest New Zealand lighthouse still in operation,

I left New Zealand two days after this visit, and was sad to depart: a month there was not nearly long enough to see this beautiful country. I hope to return, but in the meantime, heartfelt thanks to the many people who were kind to me, put me up, and showed me around. I would never have had anything like the great visit I had without their help. You know who you are, and thanks and Kia ora!