I'm in the Herald

I was in the New Zealand Herald, which is the country's largest newspaper, for this falcon project. In the print version, there are 4 pictures, including a small one of my hands holding a falcon chick. In the online version, that picture is right at the top. The article is pretty good, so you should go read it. Here is the start:

Wings scooping the air to pick up speed, the female falcon comes in to attack at eye level, a speckled-brown dart of fury aimed straight at the scientist's blue canvas hat. The heavy thud as she strikes is loud, astonishing. Immediately she sweeps up into the air, her shrieking cry echoing over the valley, jangling the nerves. This is the front line of New Zealand falcon, or karearea, research and it is not for the faint-hearted - or the hatless. To reach this nesting site, we have driven for more than an hour in a sturdy four-wheel-drive truck over narrow, treacherous dirt tracks deep into a Bay of Plenty pine forest. We arrive at a small, steep-sided valley with row upon row of baby trees growing over rugged land, the ground littered with the wood debris of past harvests. The man in charge of this falcon research project, ecologist Richard Seaton, and his two student volunteers, Matt Clement and Shane McPherson, hand out various pieces of unattractive headgear. McPherson is already wearing what looks like a tea cosy on his head and Clement is grinning knowingly. This site will be a doddle, they say. They had decided earlier not to take us to "blood gully".

And no, I don't know what a "doddle" is. I wrote more about blood gully earlier.