Holding a modern day fossil

Kim, another Teacher Fellow from Hamilton and I had three days visiting Reserves and Sanctuaries in the Wellington area. What a great opportunity we had to see a variety of native birds and wildlife. Our visits included Pukaha Mt Bruce near Masterton with the Takahe, native eels and fantastic Kaka feeding time.

At Staglands near Waikanae we got to see the the Blue Duck/Whio -a native duck currently being reintroduced onto Mt Taranaki.

The most interesting part of our visit to Nga Manu at Waikanae was holding a 25 year old Tuatara and seeing Biology students from Victoria University taking blood tests and recording their measurements.

Our final day involved meeting with other Fellows from our group and having a very interesting and entertaining guided tour of Karori/Zealandia in Wellington.

Invertebrate sorting

I am feeling a little like a scientist starting to sort out what has been found in the soil during the summer! It is a challenging job and one where I'm learning on the job all about bugs.

The classification system with Families and Orders and even the odd Latin name is keeping me guessing lots!

Day to day work at the Reserve

A variety of work happens every day at Rotokare.

The Site Manager,Simon and Project Manager,Kara spend time deciding what needs doing and which jobs take priority.

Every day a fence check is considered vital to the successful running of the Reserve. To maintain the Reserve as a pest and predator-free sanctuary is always the main focus.

Other work I have been involved with is helping clear long grass and weeds away from the recent tree plantings up near the fenceline.

Baiting and collecting tracking cards from the huge number of tracking tunnels is also on-going work that I have helped out with.

Dunedin Leadership Course

Well it felt like my student days once again-but not having to return to a grotty flat each night was great!We had a wonderful week of learning,getting to know each other,eating fabulous food and being so well looked after at the Executive Residence at Otago Uni. As a follow-up we had two assignments to complete based on leadership. We had a guided tour of the city in old cars and some of us even ran/walked to the top of Baldwin Street!!

Science Curriculum Days

20 Fellows from the North Island met in Wellington for 2 days to discuss taking science back to our classrooms and schools. We had a visit to the Island Bay Marine Reserve and all of us teachers were given different marine creature hats to wear while there!

Lizard monitoring

I was lucky to join in the day DOC staff came and helped with some Lizard monitoring at the Lake. We did tree cover checks and ground checks at various places throughout the reserve.

The tree covers are large pieces of matting put on tree trunks that lizards may like to live under and the ground checks are 2 squares of onduline on top of each other that lizards may like to take cover between. Other lizard monitors are pitfall traps that were like big paint tins in the ground and they needed to be checked every day for 10 days. Unfortunately no lizards were located but some tracks were found in tracking tunnels.

Finding my way in the bush

I have been involved with some of the monitoring that happens at Rotokare. My first stint was helping set up and collect invertebrate monitoring within the reserve.We used previous equipment already in the bush but cleaned and refilled the invert traps at 5 different locations.

The collected invertebrates are in a type of 'antifreeze' to stop them from deteriorating. They needed collecting twice in a two week period.