Weblog
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 9:28 am – Posted by Guest | 2 Comments
Guest blogger: Builder-cum-kea enthusiast Corey Mosen
Kea, Tom Marshall
Due to being such a terrific ‘pack horse’ on the first trip I was lucky enough to be offered another chance to help Clio again, this time at Mt Cook and this time with my expenses paid. Here we had the same objective; to catch, band, blood test and observe as many kea as possible.
Tue, 07 Apr 2009 8:32 am – Posted by Mandy | 2 Comments
Cane toad
As we wage war on our possums, stoats, rats to save our precious feathered friends, lets think of our Aussie counterparts, who are battling the menace that is the cane toad (Bufo Marinus).
Plucked from Hawaii and transported to Australia, these toads were used in agricultural pest control to wipe out cane beetles in 1935. They failed.
Now, Aussies have a poisonous killing-machine on their hands. An animal that breeds rapidly, eats voraciously and kills most animals that tries to eat it, including freshwater crocodiles, kangaroos and household pets.
Cloaked in the kind of jargon used to flog insecticides, Toad Day Out was an opportunity for Northern Queenslanders to collect up these remarkable predators, and win prizes (not big ones though, this wasn’t exactly a bounty killing).
Fri, 03 Apr 2009 1:07 pm – Posted by Tom | 3 Comments
Guest blogger: Photographer: Tom Marshall
Its not often you get the chance to hang around with royalty, but for the last few weeks I’ve had just that privilege with the Kingfishers (Kotare) of the Avon-Heathcote estuary near Christchurch.
Most often thought of as a bird of wetlands and coasts, the New Zealand Kingfisher is in fact a member of the ‘tree kingfishers’ family (Halcyonidae) and is just as likely to seen in farmland and forests, often far from water.
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 8:52 am – Posted by Bob Walkington | 1 Comment
Guest blogger: Inaugural 2008 Pest-buster Winner, Bob Walkington.
To win the pest buster award means we have a pest problem. To lose the award I would say we are gaining ground over pests. My pest busting ‘career’ began 5 years ago, and I’ve realised to be a good trapper you need to go the extra mile. By that I mean, you need to check the trap itself adding more than just bait, using aniseed, and sometime a bit of eucalyptus to lure in pests. 1080 is a quick fix, but that doesn’t apply where I operate - Taranaki’s oldest covenant “Collier & Dickson” 360ha of lowland podocarp & hardwood forest filled with short-tailed bats, whitehead, kakariki, tomtits and fantail.
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 1:38 pm – Posted by Emma Gilkinson | 4 Comments
Guest blogger: Kakapo nest-minder, Emma Gilkinson
It’s 8.30 pm and I’m glued to the black and white screen. Sarah the Kakapo is the star of the show. At the moment she is a still feathery pillow with eyes like shiny black berries that open and close from time to time. I’m sitting in a tent 300m away from her nest, in the heart of the forest of Codfish Island, the epi-centre of the Kakapo Recovery Programme. An infra-red camera has been installed at Sarah’s nest to relay her movements to the palm-sized monitor I’m watching.
8.36 p.m. Sarah’s left claw emerges to scratch her left cheek.
I note that down. I’ve come to Codfish Island to be a volunteer ‘Nest Minder’ for a fortnight. Nest Minders are required to keep a vigilant eye on kakapo Mums overnight during the breeding season. The nocturnal birds leave their nests at night to feed, but if they’re gone too long their eggs or chicks risk getting too cold and may need incubation or warming up on the nest with a ‘heat pad’.
Wed, 18 Mar 2009 9:29 am – Posted by Mandy | 6 Comments
Blowing into the Chatham islands on the kind of Antarctic wind that keeps its trees in a permanent supine position, I’m greeted on the airport’s gangway by a southerly blast that ushers me hurriedly onto a land where the plants, birds and insect life is like no where else in the world.
The Chatham Islands murderous wind; the super-sized Chatham Island tui & the transmittter which tracks each of the birds post-release.
Weta -eating spiders the size of your fist, supersize tui, spike-free lancewood, and over 160 endemic species of insects call this archipelago home, however the majority of these unique species can only be found on the three small, inaccessible offshore islands that surround the mainland.
These very islands hold almost 20% of New Zealand’s threatened bird species (Black Robin, Forbes Parakeet, CI Mollymawk, CI Snipe, CI Shore Plover), but with the hard work of two conservationists these species may stage a return to the main island.
Here to bear witness to the transfer of CI tui onto the main Chatham island after a 25 year absence, I point my jeep in the direction of the Southern tip where the 14 birds are being held pre-release. It only takes a drive through the countryside to see why birds & plants find this land inhospitable.
Large stretches of farmland and patches of bracken fill my window, punctuated by the odd tree set at a 45 degree angle. Farmers removed much of the island’s historical artefacts (Moriori tree carvings) and unique natural heritage* one hundred and fifty years ago by cutting great swathes of forested land, and converting it to farmland.
Now just a few forested patches remain, and the salt-laced, corrosive and sometimes murderous winds, have destroyed exposed parts of these remnants leaving tree cemeteries on their borders.
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 2:23 pm – Posted by Brian Lloyd | 3 Comments
Forest & Bird’s Bat Survey Officer, Top of the South, Brian Lloyd
Tasked with the job of surveying bat populations in the top of the South island, I have spent many summer days setting out bat detectors around the countryside in the hope that they pick up the high frequency echolocation (or clicks) that bats use to navigate their way around.
Short-tailed bat, Photo: Rosalind Cole
Sometimes a seemingly fruitless task , finding populations of these rare and elusive short-tailed and long-tailed bats, contributes to a national picture of the status of these two disappearing species.
Differing not only in appearance, but also with respect to feeding patterns & behaviour, our two bat species share little in common.
Short –tailed bats generally roost in large tree cavities, and in winter are known to stay in their roosts and go into torpor. Like our kakapo, they have a lek breeding system, which is the equivalent of a male sing-star contest to win over a prize mate. Most peculiarly though, is the way that they forage. Unlike most other micro-bats that catch air-borne creatures, short-tailed bats are known to forage on the ground using their folded wings as front limbs. This unusual trait makes them particularly vulnerable to predation. In the central North Island I found several thousand of these wonderful creatures in the large tracts of indigenous forest from Urewera west to Taranaki. A career highlight!
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 8:59 am – Posted by Ailsa Howard | 1 Comment
Guest blogger: Chairperson for the Kaikoura Branch, Ailsa Howard
While DOC has been busy crafting dummy sea-lions in an attempt to attract males ashore, the Kaikoura community along with the local DOC staff have been involved in a charade of our own: playing the call of the endangered Hutton’s shearwater through loud speakers, in bid to get them to return to their new breeding site.
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:25 am – Posted by GraemeHill | 13 Comments
Guest Blogger: Graeme Hill, Secretary, Campaign for the Grey Warbler 2008 (and Radio Live Host)
2007 was a landmark year for Gerygone igata, or the grey warbler, or the riroriro, or the Bird Of The Year, or the Coolest Bird in New Zealand. At long, long last the underbird got the recognition it deserved, and if you read on I will put the case why it deserves to win this year as well.
But first, an apology:
Towards the end of a long and hard campaign last year some regrettable things were said by the Grey Warbler campaign about other birds. I was tired, I was emotional and I broke. I’m sorry.
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 9:22 am – Posted by Marina | 4 Comments
Welcome to Forest & Bird’s weblog. Like Forest & Bird itself, our weblog will touch on just about everything native and New Zealand: our native plants, animals, our wilderness areas and environment, whether they are on land, in our lakes, rivers and oceans.
We welcome your thoughts and ideas about how we can all contribute to helping preserve our precious – and vulnerable – natural heritage.
Standby for opinion pieces, diary-style web-logs, videos of our projects and much, much more. Just watch this space!