Keruru browsing

Two large woodpigeon were having a great time browsing on tawa and mahoe trees close to the start of the walkway at Rotokare.

They enjoyed eating the leaves and buds of these native trees.

The keruru were a noisy pair as they flew from bush to bush and happily ate any berries or leaves around.

Setting up Invertebrate traps

Bryan is doing some study through Massey University and as part of this he needed to set up a couple of lots of pitfall traps for invertebrates to hopefully fall into!

We used the two locations reasonably close to the road and carpark for this.

I had helped set up the traps in the summer and we had fun locating the spots needed again.

Bryan, Sue and I had a lake walk in the process and enjoyed the beautiful flora and fauna of Rotokare as well.

Visit to Maungatautari

Melissa the Rotokare educator and I spent a couple of days visiting Maungatautari Ecological Island in the Waikato this week.

We were met by Gemma the educator and we watched a lesson she taught to children from a Te Awamutu school. Many of the things Gemma spoke about were similar to the things Melissa teaches children at Rotokare. It was great to see Gemma's lesson and then head into the native bush at the Southern Enclosure at Maungatautari.

We also enjoyed excellent meals and accommodation at 'Out in the Styks'.

Guided Bush Walk at Rotokare

I enjoyed taking two school groups on guided bush walks around the lake at Rotokare.

The rain came down and the track was muddy in places but the children from St Josephs in Stratford and a number of parents coped well!

There are lots of really interesting trees that are worth identifying on this walk.

They include mahoe,kawakawa,rangiora,lancewood and our only native palm the nikau.

Also magnificant tawa,pukatea and kahikatea are beautiful trees throughout the swampier areas. The range of ferns is also noteworthy as well as the pretty copper and green leaves of the parataniwha.

5 Minute Bird Counts

We had an enjoyable 'cluster meeting' in the provinces of three Primary Science Teacher Fellows.
Kim from Hamilton came down and met up with Pat and Janet in Taranaki for a couple of days.
We visited Pat's workplace at DOC New Plymouth and looked out at Tupuae Marine Reserve from Back Beach then spent a morning doing 5 Minute Bird Counts from points around the lake at Rotokare.
We managed to hear and see lots of Paradise and Mallard ducks,fantails and silvereyes.

A highlight was hearing and actually seeing a secretive fernbird amongst the raupo.

Bryan from Hawera also joined us and many thanks to Kara for organising and accompanying us-what a large number of bird calls she could recognise!

Viewing a robin at Rotokare

While collecting some Lizard traps in the Reserve I was lucky enough to be in the company of a very friendly North Island robin. It happily searched in the leaf litter for anything to eat and didn't mind me getting quite close for this photo.

Possibly the same robin has been seen in this spot during the late summer-we hope it has a mate out in the bush as well.

Birds I have seen often at Rotokare include fantail, woodpigeon,tui and bellbird plus various ducks and shags on the lake.

Bushy Park

Bushy Park is approx 30 minutes out of Wanganui.

Within the grounds there is a lovely old homestead plus a large amount of native bush.

I enjoyed some easy short walks and the native trees-a fantastic old Northern Rata,which started life as an epiphyte-being hosted by another tree!

At Bushy Park there is a predator-proof fence-similar to Rotokares and a shorter rodent fence as well.

Lake Rotokare Scenic Reserve website

Check out what is happening at Rotokare by visiting http://www.rotokare.org.nz/

This website gives you a map of where Rotokare is and some background information plus what's been going on out there recently.

It also tells you about 'the fence',what you might see and do and the interesting history of this special Reserve.

Collecting Lizard traps

Three types of Lizard traps have been out in the bush at Rotokare. Two of these- the tree covers and onduline ground traps can stay out all-year round but the pitfall traps need collecting and sorting before being set again next summer.

The pitfall traps are basically old paint cans baited with pear, set in the ground with a slim wooden cover over the top that hopefully any lizards at Rotokare will be attracted to.

On this day we were collecting traps up in the control area and on the bush ridge.

John had fun carrying these back to the carpark!

Otari-Wilton's Bush Reserve

While in Wellington we got the chance to visit Otari-Wilton's Bush Reserve. This is a huge bush area that includes native Botanic gardens within Wellington city.

There is an informative visitors centre, places to cook a barbeque and many walks-one of which took us to see this 800 year old rimu tree.