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  • Buy Art
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      • All prints
      • Birds of a feather
        • The Chase (pīwakawaka)
        • The Secret (pīwakawaka)
        • A real kiwi joker (kiwi pukupuku)
        • Bursting out (kākāriki)
        • Winging it (kākā)
        • Popping up (takahē)
        • Emerging (kākā kura)
        • Unfurling (tūī)
        • Abracadabra (kererū)
        • Autumn (kākā)
        • Muriwai (tākapu)
      • Birds of the world
        • Over the moon (red-tailed black cockatoo)
        • Contented (kookaburra)
        • Dreams of Freedom (dollarbird)
        • Her Majesty (eclectus parrot)
        • Whirlybird (scaly-breasted lorikeet)
      • Flights of fancy
        • The Selfie (kākā)
        • It's about time
        • Professor Polly
        • The big idea
        • A quick study
        • The reckoning
        • The scenic route
        • The bird watcher
        • Uncharted waters
        • When I sing my heart ascends
      • The beloved tūī
        • Portrait of a tūī
        • The Sign of the Southern Cross (tūī)
        • Nightlife
        • I shall ride every storm (tūī)
        • From Whence Cometh Evil (tūī)
        • Sad wings of destiny (tūī)
        • The Collector (tūī)
        • The Spy (tūī)
        • Unfurling (tūī)
        • Forever calling me (tūī)
        • A portrait of a tui 2
        • A portrait of a tui 3
        • In all his glory (tūī)
      • Awesome forces
        • All at sea
        • He came to me...
        • Adrift
        • The emergence of flight
      • Visions of Zealandia
        • Visions of Zealandia
        • An urban jungle
        • Imagine
        • Break on through...
      • Support Zealandia
      • A cacophony of kākā
        • Baby kākā
      • Wildlife Photography
        • A new view
        • His resplendence (tūī)
        • The Sweetheart (kākā)
        • Portrait of a tūī
        • After midnight (kiwi pukupuku)
        • Dreaming big (takahē)
        • Baby Takahē
        • The Poser (scaly-breasted lorikeet)
        • The Watcher (blue and gold macaw)
        • The Fighter (rainbow lorikeet)
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"Professor Polly" and bird brains

21/9/2018

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Picture
Is "Professor Polly" a polyglot, a polymath or just darn smart?!
Those all-knowing eyes! I was completely captivated by this lovely youngster - she's as bright as a button and so curious about the world. She became "Professor Polly", and she reminds me so much of a super-smart friend who became one of youngest female professors in NZ's history (who coincidentally has a daughter named Polly!).

I have long been fascinated with bird intelligence and cognition. Study after study are now showing that birds are incredibly intelligent - just this week there was news about tool-use seen in kea (the kākā's cousin) in the wild. Long gone are the days when scientists thought that tiny brains relative to body size meant tiny abilities. Birds have vastly more dense innervation allowing smarts to be packed in much more tightly than human brains. And parrots and corvids are some of the brightest. 

Researchers are quite taken by the kākā as a study subject. They're cousins of the kea, who are thought to be the most intelligent bird species in the world, but kākā are rating similarly on the IQ scales. It is fascinating watching them solve the tasks the researchers set them. The thought was that as social birds they would learn by watching their friends solve problems. From what I've seen, it appears more competitive than that with each wanting to show that they can solve puzzles their own way. It was quite incredible to see how many different techniques there are to solve the simple task of acquiring a cashew nut tied to the end of a string.

Not only are kākā super intelligent but they have complex emotional and social lives. We do of course have to be careful at over-anthropomorphizing, but I fear under-anthropomorphizing has had a negative effect not just on our understanding of animal cognition but also animal welfare. They might not think or feel identically to humans, but they think and feel and we shouldn't assume less. 

My favourite Books about bird brains

  • Bird Sense - what it's like to be a bird, Tim Birkenhead
    A highly approachable and fascinating read about bird abilities - including some you don't have!
  • Bird Minds, Gisela Kaplan
    A more academic book, but an incredible journey through bird abilities that will completely change the way you see your feathered friends.
  • The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots, Irene Pepperberg
    The research and researcher that changed the way we saw bird, and animal, communication and cognition. This is the more academic book, if you're interested in the research itself. The more approachable book is:​
  • Alex & Me: how a scientist and parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence-and formed a deep bond in the process, Irene Pepperberg
    Simply a must read. It took Irene decades for her work to be accepted, so entrenched were the attitudes that birds and most other animals were soulless automata, incapable of complex thought.



Professor Polly (kākā)

NZ$85.00 - NZ$350.00
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Zealandia calendar & Storyteller exhibition

21/9/2018

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Picture
Coverpage of the 2019 Zealandia calendar, featuring the ever-popular tūī.
Picture
The results of our annual labour-of-love are in the Zealandia shop! Our Zealandia fund-raising calendar is a huge team effort from the volunteer Storyteller team, and this is the best one yet. I was delighted to hear they are selling like hotcakes, literally while the first shipment was being unpacked.

The calendar is crammed full of wonderful wildlife photos for thirteen months (January-to-January), each with a story and complete critter identifications in Māori, Common, and Latin. My favourite this year is (perhaps surprisingly to some) not one of mine, but Linton's photo and Louise's story about "Buddy" the super-smart toutouwai.
And not only do we have a calendar, but through October and November, selected and additional photographs and longer stories from the calendar will be on exhibition in the Zealandia Stairwell Gallery. Come and find out why we love Zealandia so much!

​With stories by Louise Slocombe, Vanya Bootham, Chris Gee, and Lynn Freeman, and photographs by Janice McKenna, Hayley May, Andrew Hawke, Linton Miller, Chris Gee, Lynn Freeman, Brendon Doran, and myself, there is something of interest for everyone. 

And now the 2019 calendar is sorted, I'm already thinking about 2020 - what would you like to see featured?

The volunteer Storytellers' support Zealandia's fundraising efforts with the calendar and postcards, amongst many other activities. Individual artists and photographers also have high-quality prints and photographs available in the store. Proceeds from sales go directly to support Zealandia's not-for-profit conservation and restoration efforts.
​
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On the edge of time

4/9/2018

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A misty early-morning scene of kāruhirhui (pied shags) nesting on a fallen tree in a lake
"On the edge of time" - kāruhiruhi breeding colony at Zealandia - photo art by Judi Lapsley Miller
I'm going to take you behind the scenes of what has been one of my most popular posts on social media recently and let you in on how it came about... I know it has been puzzling some folks...

It was a typical Sunday morning, mid-winter at Zealandia, on our regular photowalk and we had just reached the pontoon to spend some time with the kāruhiruhi families as they went through their morning rituals. The low sun was just starting to break around the corner, back-lighting the birds and sparkling the dew still hanging on the leaves. Then the rays hit the chilly lake and ethereal mist began rising. For once I was delighted to have lost the battle as to who had the 24-70mm and who had the 100-400mm lens!
PictureOne of the source images, straight-out-of-camera, unedited.
The magical misty light hung around for only a few minutes; just enough time to take a bunch of photos with the wrong settings and then to figure out something that might work better and to hopefully get a nice shot. And the photos were indeed "nice," but not much more and I put them aside. On returning to them some months later, I realized that there was no one shot that had everything, but with some judicious compositing I could create a scene with a story.

I know some people have assumed that this image is a single photograph and have puzzled over how I got the shot, so I'd like to set the record straight, so to speak. And in one sense it is "just a photograph," far less messed about with than some of my images. But I believe that adding artistic licence and liberating oneself from pure photography, it's possible to more accurately capture a moment experienced and to share that emotion.

So what did I do? Four very similar photos went into this image - each was selected for what the birds were doing over the course of just 5 minutes. One was swimming making a spiral of ripples, two youngsters were looking excitedly into the water, another was "hanging out the washing to dry", and others were looking with anticipation into the new day. No one photo showed all that happening and there was no time to wait until they simultaneously did something - the mist was fading too fast. Choosing one photo as the main image, I did a first pass through camera raw to make basic adjustments to the exposure and lighting. I then carefully masked, adjusted with camera raw, and composited in the alternative birds to create a more interesting version of the scene. Then came a little bit of secret sauce; using Topaz Impression to add in a silky, painterly feel at a lowered opacity over the image, and then layering painted textures using soft-light blend modes to subtly change the lighting. When viewed at full size, the more painterly feel is much more apparent. A couple of passes through adjusting highlights and shadows and spot-healing distractions completed the image.

Do you like this image more or less now that you know how it came to be? Do you feel cheated and that it somehow isn't real? Does it take away the magic knowing what was added and how it was made? Or do you feel like you've seen through my eyes and into my soul? Have we shared a moment?

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    Judi Lapsley Miller

    Fine art inspired by the stories of birds and the natural world. Starting with photographs, I let my imagination take me on flights of fancy. What is real and what is imagined is blurred. What is physical and what is virtual is disrupted. Bursting with colour and life.
    ​Welcome to the Art of Birding...
     

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