Wild Dunedin: Enjoying the Natural History of New Zealand's Wildlife Capital

Dunedin is a city where a walk on the beach can lead to an encounter with a sea-lion or little blue penguins emerging from the sea at dusk. Its formal boundaries include a huge area, from Mt Watkin near Waikouaiti inland to the Rock and Pillar Range and south to the Taieri, New Zealand’s third-longest river. This represents a zone of endless interest, ranging from the seashore to high alpine environments. The city and its environs are home to an exciting range of habitats and landscapes, of plants, animals, birds, insects and geological features. This book, which is lavishly illustrated, introduces the general reader to such fascinating aspects of the natural environment as the Dunedin volcano whose crater now forms Otago Harbour, the endemic life forms found only in this region – such as the Caversham peripatus, the weird environment of New Zealand’s only inland salt lake, the skink populations surviving in rocky outcrops where the New Zealand falcon has difficulty spotting them, as well as the more well-known and popular attractions, such as the yellow-eyed penguin and royal albatross colonies on the Otago Peninsula. For the 2010 reprint, information has been added on the recently established Orokonui Ecosanctuary, the only predator-free mainland sanctuary in the South Island.