I met a great kid at the Bird of the Year book launch last night who told me about, among other things, his passion for dermestid beetles. He was organising to volunteer at Te Papa (the big museum) with an archaeologist we both know. Like theoretically would he get to work with the dermestid beetles? The archaeologist told us he'd likely be sifting dirt for tiny bits of fossil, which we both thought sounded great, & I was like "I want to volunteer too!"

The kid was campaign manager for Tōroa, the Royal albatross, for Bird of the Year, so if you want to do him a solid, you can go vote for Tōroa here (voting opens 15th September): birdoftheyear.org.nz

(Or, I mean, vote for your actual favourite bird. I'm leaning kākā. At the bus stop on the way to the book launch I met a guy ((also going to the book launch)) who told me that on the offshore islands you're not even meant to talk to the kākā, to keep them in a state of nature, I guess.)

I wrote about the time I found a dead albatross here: