Colin Miskelly

Colin Miskelly (born ) At the age of 13 he became a member of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand, and at age 15, he spent six weeks on the Chatham Islands on an expedition focussed on the Chatham Island tāiko (Pterodroma magentae). He has spent six summers on the Snares Islands studying snipe. including representing DOC on the board of the Karori Sanctuary Trust (the operator of Zealandia) from 1998 to 2010. He then moved to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, where he became curator of vertebrates. He was the driving force behind the creation of the New Zealand Birds Online website, launched in 2013. Over a hundred expert authors and over 500 photographers have been involved in creating this digital encyclopedia, which records all of New Zealand's bird species (extant or extinct). , Miskelly remains as the site administrator.

Miskelly's special area of interest is the New Zealand snipe (Coenocorypha). In 2002, a revision of the genus carried out in collaboration with Trevor Worthy led to the elevation of the former subspecies Coenocorypha aucklandica iredalei, Coenocorypha aucklandica huegeli and Coenocorypha aucklandica barrierensis to species status. In 2010 he and Allan J. Baker (1943–2014) described the subspecies Coenocorypha aucklandica perseverance.

In 2018, Miskelly was part of a team of scientists that first described the critically endangered diving petrel species Whenua Hou diving petrel (Pelecanoides whenuahouensis) from Codfish Island / Whenua Hou. This taxon was originally considered a population of the broad-billed guillemot petrel (Pelecanoides georgicus).

Over the period November 2023 to March 2024, Miskelly undertook a trek along the full length of the Te Araroa Trail from Cape Reinga to Bluff making observations of birds at intervals along the way. The observations were reported progressively in blog posts during the walk.

Selected publications

Selected articles Miskelly has written or contributed to numerous articles for the journal Notornis, including:

Books In 2008 he edited the book Chatham Islands: Heritage and Conservation.

In 2020, along with co-author Craig Symes, Miskelly edited a collection of papers entitled Lost Gold: Ornithology of the subantarctic Auckland Islands.

Awards In 2021, Miskelly and his co-author Craig Symes won the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales Whitley Award for the book Lost Gold: Ornithology of the subantarctic Auckland Islands.

In 2024, Miskelly was elected as a Fellow of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand.

In 2024, Miskelly was awarded the Cranwell Medal by the New Zealand Association of Scientists, for "excellence in communicating science to the general public in any area of science or technology".