Taking a Walk on the Wild Side - Whatipu.

Whatipu revisited. It's always good to lay down new memories next to old. That doesn't mean that the old ones are diminished in any way. It's a while since I had been to Whatipu beach, the last time with Bot Soc. A friend had missed out on a trip there too and so we picked a great day for a walk up the beach to Karekare.

The sun was shining but a brisk Southerly reduced the temperature to around 13C but in
the shelter of the dunes it was warm and the black sand underfoot was pleasant.

Here Eliane is snapping some large bird prints which we think are bittern prints. We also saw paradise duck, pied stilts, banded dotterel and this NZ pipit feeding. We heard but didn't see fernbird.

We stayed until the sun began to set then headed back to my local Indian restaurant where Eliane chose a delicious vegetarian meal to share based on her visits to India. I'm learning to enjoy the variety of flavours available in Indian food.

Shifting Sands then Wet Wet Wet!

A good start with clear skies but then no need to throw myself in the river this week although I might have stayed drier if I had.

I had promised to help with carrying some gear to the river site on the East coast and part way through the forest  just before we reached the dunes and beach the rain started, then became torrential the moment we left the relative shelter of the forest.

Eliane checked the traps several of which were buried  in the sand -dunes from the recent cyclone. I went back for more gear hoping for some shelter in the forest but it made no difference. Fortunately I had donned my rain gear just in time. Eliane didn't and ended up soaked. We eventually abandoned the project for another day but at least I felt I had done my part which was helping to carry everything in.

We headed home to get into dry clothes and spent an hour or two thumbing  through my Kashmir book, admiring the beautiful photos. Then  it was my turn  to choose somewhere for dinner.

Kotuku

The 'F word.' Fun of course! That's what yesterday turned out to be, well hilarious actually mostly at my expense. We had arranged to meet to walk to some East coast beaches to check traps and later meet up with a scientist to check on Kauri dieback disease in a local Reserve.  

The first beach went fine but as with the other traps checked later there would be no catches today. However to our delight a white heron was feeding with a group of black shags so we had some good views of that. Eliane fixed up some posts ready for the Summer season. We skipped the second beach to be in time to meet up with Tony and went onto our third beach site heading through the forest  after chatting to the young guys herding the cattle from some rather wet fields.

 At the beach the various combinations of planting for restoration were discussed. We crossed the river at a shallow point and  spent an hour or so collecting shells then moving them to suitable spot to attract nesting birds. It was while carrying a couple of bags of shells back across the river that I decided to try a shallower crossing where the river met the sea but this turned out to be a fatal error.  I disappeared under to about chest height. It was too late that I realised that the flow of water had gauged out the river bed deeply.

Lunch was next as I changed into my rain gear over-pants. Eliane thought I looked like a Ninja with my black merino top on too. Tony thought I should wear a berka to complete the outfit. I thought I should take up cycling with the Lycra sensation of the over trousers which I was beginning to enjoy. The rest is unrepeatable.


The pied stilt family of two adults and two juveniles are still together with an additional adult. The family have been together since January this year.

Later our forest walk up to the ridge was interesting but didn't quite hit the spot for finding diseased trees and soon the light would have been failing under the trees. Tony headed home and Eliane and I headed back to the beach we had missed earlier to complete the trap checking and re-baiting and then home for a welcomed evening meal and glass or two of wine.

Motuora Island

Great to catch up with some people met previously on Motuora and Tiri.

Shelley and Wolfgang who I hadn't seen since April 2013 when we were track clearing on the Island.

 We had on that visit forgotten to set our watches for daylight saving so headed back for lunch an hour early and were disappointed that the BBQ wasn't lit and ready but it was only 11am.

Bev and Fran I recently met in April on my last visit to Tiri and there had been a good group of people staying at that time.

Yesterday we were tree planting in the direction of the created gannet colony, complete with fake plastic gannets and a continual sound recording booming out over the sea of gannets calling.

Thanks Eliane for cooking dinner and for an enjoyable relaxing fun evening as always..

More photos to follow...........................

Congratulations Margi and BWT.

I arrived  just in  time at Sylvan Park for Margi's speech in celebration of  a 10 year birthday for her very popular bush walking programme called 'Bush Walk and Talk' (BWT).

 A good crowd had turned up for a walk by the lake and I just had to get a group photo of this event.

I knew that Margi would be leading the group to see  the just into flowering  Kohekohe, Dysoxylum Spectabile. 

This tree caught my imagination when I learnt that a sample of the flowers were taken on Captain James Cook's 1769 NZ expedition to GT Britain and then over 200 years later were gifted back to New Zealand. The framed botanical sample is stored at Te Papa museum and on a visit to Wellington last year I hoped to see this but unfortunately its not on display at the museum at that time.

I was sorry that I couldn't stay for the walk today but had some other commitments.

Well done Margi and hopefully BWT will still be going strong in another ten years.

Mataia Homestead on the Kaipara

It was a year ago during May 2013 that Eliane and I were at the launch of Nature Space at the 'Cloud' on Auckland's waterfront. The lovely people from the Mataia homestead, Gill and Kevin were speaking about their decision and the process of managing  the Mataia farm  estate towards an ecological estate to increase the biodiversity  so attracting native species.

Eliane had been involved in some work on the land at the  edge of the Kaipara so it was an interesting talk for both of us.

 

 It was a great evening celebrating my May birthday with the hilarious  bow- tie gift incident from Eliane and Sally from  Mid-North, Forest and Bird .  The  story is too long  to recount here but it left both Eliane and I in fits of laughter.

Last weekend Mataia Estate and homestead was featured on Country calendar with kiwi birds released that were trans located from  Motuora island.

 

Today we visiting the Mataia homestead with Bot Soc .  Its great to see so many familiar faces including Margi and Richard from Forest & Bird and Neil and Joe too. Jill had made fresh scones for us and with a cup of tea and gave an introduction to our day with maps and aerial photos.

We are soon heading off in a convoy of cars to the start of our walk at the sand quarry. Soon we were walking through bush with interesting species including this rarely seen Corybas orchid.

The walk took us through Kanuka and Manuka bush and then along the edge of the kaipara harbour. Gill was resetting the Timms traps with apple  to attract possum and all traps were set about 700cm high to prevent inquisitive Kiwi getting accidentally caught.  Stopping at the side of the coastal track we heard the illusive fernbirds in the Meuhlenbeckia.

We navigated our way back to the homestead across fields. The walk now over, then a drive via the back roads in the now drizzling rain from the West coast to the East coast to spend the evening with Eliane. To catch up on the finer points of such things as  GPS tracking, and her  fish survey  then  finishing of the day with an Indian meal.  Perfect Day!

 

  

Heath Reserve Council Tree planting and Forest and Bird planting at Tuff Crater.

The perfect winters day, blue sky and sunshine.

 A great turn out for the council planting at Heath Reserve(900 plants) and then a walk around the point to plant along the Southern side of Tuff Crater (700 plants).

This is Andrea who has just started working for the Kaipatiki Project

 This is part of the on-going Forest and Bird restoration project..

More photos at this link- http://tinyurl.com/nyg6s62

It's June again.

When  on Tiri in April I walked my favourite muehlenbeckia lined  tracks, where I had seen fernbird before but they were too illusive to photograph on this day. However  this young fantail followed me everywhere.
 It was an uplifting experience but this photo  won't make the Tiri 2015 calendar now.  I have been asked for two other preferred photos, one of a fernbird and the other of three pukeko in a row, however to me, at this time, this bird stole the day.

A friend is working on Tiri this weekend I wonder if my fantail is chasing her?



Vale of Kashmir

It’s on my bucket list, Kashmir. That’s after Western Australia towards the end of this year. I don’t usually rave about camera equipment but the photos in this excellent book by John Issac are all taken on an Olympus E1 camera which was the first digital camera (2004) that I owned. Some reviews at the time  panned it for not having enough mega pixels It had 6 but boy every mega pixel was excellent and the camera a pleasure to use particularly for landscape  and nature photography. I published my little North Shore Bush book with images taken with this camera. It was a very miss-understood camera  system.

 John Issac is a master. Originally a UN photographer until  the effects of human suffering  in war torn countries got the better of him and he re-invented himself as a wildlife and travel photographer.. The photos of Kashmir are just beautiful with a Rembrandt, biblical  quality, particularly  the portraits.

 

 This book is an inspiration and I recommend it to anyone who thinks that high spec’d cameras are the key to good photography. I have moved on to a Canon system for its focus tracking and high ISO, essential for birds in flight photography but I  have kept all my Olympus lenses and will build an Olympus light weight camera system for Island hopping and travel with their latest offering, this time, the well reviewed OMD EM1.

That’s enough camera talk for a year or maybe a lifetime..

This book was a great present Thank you so much.

  

Banded Dotterels-where are you?

I need some high resolution shots of Banded dotterels for an interpretive sign we are putting together for Shoal Bay. The design of this is going well, with Forest and Bird input and I have taken all the bird and habitat photos except a BD. The Miranda coastline seemed a good place to start and sure enough there are 50 at Miranda but way too far away for me to photograph. Pity because the lighting was just stunning.

Its a beautiful coastline between Kawakawa Bay and Miranda. With several Regional Reserves.  Had to have a look at the newest  just above Kawakawa bay on the Clevedon side.  Waitawa  shows great promise with superb views across the water. The slopes have had all their trees felled and I guess there will be a huge native tree planting project beginning soon.

Two hedgehogs a weasel and a storm petrel.

Yesterday was another beautiful day checking the traps protecting three beach bird sites
 We were pleased to have now caught a second weasel near to where we had previously found their tracks in the sand.

On one of the beaches we found the remains of a dead bird which my friend thinks may be a storm petrel. We are hoping to get confirmation of this.

New Zealand Seabird report launch.

Last evening I  was invited to attend, at the Auckland Memorial Museum, the launch of the New Zealand Seabird report.

 This new report outlines the 'Important Bird Areas' (IBAs) and conservation of seabirds in New Zealand.

It's an extremely timely document considering the lack of protection for our marine environment and the Governments recent rush/panic to offer and open up for exploration and exploitation to the highest bidders 90% of our marine resource.


We were also able to view the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition and see some truly remarkable photography.



Thanks Eliane, a fun event and I am now looking forward to that chocolate cake.

Another Birthday!

A great place to celebrate, 16 metres high in the tree top tower of the Maungatautari Ecological Reserve...................

A goal should be to do the six hour cross mountain walk before my next!


Later I wanted to suss out before a longer visit the Whangamarino wetland, a Ramsar site near Meremere. Its a vast area and has 20% of NZ bitterns to be seen there. Also the rare black mud fish and the helmut  orchid that is found nowhere else in the world.

A friend has suggested that we take the kayak next time but that would have to be after the duck shooting season for fear of ending up on someones wall as a trophy.

On Lake Karapiro

 A  date, on a special day, with  a special person at a lovely  house on the lake. 

Sanctuary Mountain

kaka

A perfect time to visit  Mangatautari mountain to see the largest pest-proof predator fence in the world. Its impressive.....................

There are some great projects going on in New Zealand for ecological restoration and this is one of them.

tomtit

Lake Karapiro

Autumn

in the Waikato

Elian's Fish Survey.

With three sweeps on either side of the river this was going to take a while and with a shower of rain too at the first sweep.

As with the previous sweeps at the other site, a small but interesting variety of fish were found.

















We also found on closer examination of the nets
hundreds, probably thousands of  tiny fish below 1cm in size.








Inanga one of the whitebait, migratory galaxiids

Sweeping towards the catch net.

Sweeping mid-stream. This wasnt too succesful probably due to no edge vegetation for the fish to hide in.

Croissant to go !

The best laid plans. The croissants didn't work out as the local bakery had none.

 A French stick was a surreal substitute especially when you walk across this landscape carrying a net in one hand and a French loaf in another, but hey........


I was tempted to have my usual dip but summer is over and  the sea is cooling down. It was good to just enjoy the day, move the nets to another location and catch up with the dotterels, oystercatcher and pied stilt along the Mangawhai coastline.                                                        

 We think these are weasel prints in the sand which is a worry for a new seasons nesting birds so a trap will have to be placed nearby.