New Kids on the block .... well new birds in the sanctuary!

One of the big projects that the Rotokare Trust have been working on for a long time is the translocation of 2 speices of native birds. These birds are Popokotea (whitehead) and Tieke (saddleback.) Rotokare have not undertaken any translocations (other than kiwi) before, so are incredibly excited about the project.


Popokotea do currently live in Taranaki, but only in small numbers.
These are birds grow to around 14-18 grams in weight and won't get any bigger than 15cm in height. They are birds that are hard to spot as they live high up in the canopies of mature forests. Popokotea stay in flocks of up to 30 birds.

 

 Maori believed that the popokotea were a warning that kehua (ghosts) were about.
An interesting story about the Popokotea's nests is that in November and December the long-tail cuckoo (Koekoeaa) will often lay their eggs in the little nests. Thus leaving the popokotea to raise chicks that will eventually grow to be 7 times the weight of its foster parent!

One of the marvellous catch team Dave holding one of the stars of the show.

Tieke have an amazing story of survival. As recently as 1964 there was only one small population of these birds that were found on Hen Island (Hen & Chicken Islands.) These birds were moved to pest-free off shore island, in what was a world leading example of saving birds from extinction.

Over the last 50 years these birds have been translocated to various sanctuaries and islands and the numbers are flourishing.

Kaye with one of the first Tieke caught.

The Tieke nests near the ground (often in holes in trees) and spends a lot of time feeding on the ground. This is what makes it vunerable to predators.
The bird gets its name from the markings on it's back which look like it is wearing a saddle.
Maori legend says that after Maui slowed the sun he was incredibly thirsty and hot, he asked the bird to get him some water and the bird refused. Maui, being angry, grabbed the bird with his burning hand thus leaving a brown mark across its back.
 The Saddleback was once hunted for food but was given legal protection in 1896.
The Tieke can range in weight between 70-80grams and can grow to around 25 cms in height.
The Tieke belongs to the wattlebird family of the kokako and huia (now extinct.)

All factual information I have used in this blog were taken from Andrew Crowe's

'Which New Zealand Bird?'

My yr 8 students come to work-

I am very fortunate that the school I work at has a really close relationship with Lake Rotokare.
Geographically we are only about 6 kilometres apart. My 2 hosts (Melissa and Simon) are also parents on our board of trustees. Other school parents are trustees on the Lake Trust and other parents are volunteers.
The lake project is an important part of our school culture. We visit the lake as often as we can and we help out whenever we can make it work.
Over the years our students have been involved with planting, weeding, weta hotel building and we were a pilot school for a lot of the education programmes that Melissa runs.

I am super lucky to have the opportunity through my teaching fellowship to be working at the lake alongside people that are already considered good friends.

Last year my prinicipal and Simon (my host and BOT chair at the time)  finally sorted out an idea we have been throwing around for awhile- twice a term, the year 8 students would go to the lake and do some volunteer work that makes a real contribution to the project.

Earlier in the first term the students came to help with the pitfall trap monitoring. This was while I was away in Dunedin on my leadership course so I was a little sad that I didn't get to be part of it.

This time they came out to help collect tracking tunnel cards. It was the first rainy day in months, but as I found out years ago- rain doesn't stop Rawhitiroa School from doing things!
The 5 year 8s arrived in raincoats and sensible footwear ready to work.

Daryl and Chauncy looking at a tracking card

Rawhitiroa School Year 8 students and Chanucy before the rain!

Darrian and Karen carefully making their way down an 'easy' bank

Logan posing!

Darrian posing

Thanks Logan for taking a photo of me!

Volunteer work has been a huge part of my life for a long time (Mountain safety council, Land search and resuce, New Zealand Cadet Forces.)
Being able to introduce my students to volunteer work is really rewarding.
We had an enjoyable few hours together, it was great to share with them what I am doing. I am really looking for to term 2!

Tracking tunnels part 2- what we found

This week we have been working hard to collect in all the cards that we put out last week.

The most exciting find was this card-

 

These are lizard prints!

 

After 1000 cards with weta, ants, beetles and spider prints, finding this card had the team really excited!

After an unsuccessful round of pitfall trapping last month, we were really pleased to find these prints.

We know that lizards are in the sanctuary because they are being seen, their prints are being found in tunnels and they are being heard- they are obviously just far too smart to fall into our traps.

 

Lizards are an indicator speices. They indiciate the level of predation in an area. If there are no predators, there should be plenty of lizards. With Lake Rotokare now reaching the end of its 5th year as predator free, we should be seeing lizard numbers growing.

 

Weta are the other indicator species the team at Rotokare are really interested in knowing about. Our tracking tunnel run has shown that we have TONNES of weta.

 

The other neat thing to happen during the collection of the tunnel cards was a visit from my Year 8 students. (Read the next post to find out more. )

 

I was lucky enough to be joined last Sunday by a young man called Blair and his carer Sylvia. We spent an enjoyable few hours collecting the cards from the edge of the lake. It was neat to work with a young man who has a disability but was so keen to be out in the environment learning and helping. Blair took the following photo of me resetting some mouse traps- Thanks Blair!

 

 

 

 

tracking tunnels- cards out (part one)

As part of the ongoing biosecurity measures at Lake Rotokare, a full scale tracking tunnel run is held twice a year. A tracking tunnel is a rectangular shaped tunnel that has an inked card in the middle of it. It gets baited and left out for a week.
Tunnels are one of the monitoring measures used at the lake.
Creatures will be lured by the smell of the bait, walk into the tunnel... walk across the ink pad... have a nibble.... then walk out the other end... leaving their prints behind.

One of the tunnels

one of the cards, laid out with peanut butter and a small piece of meat

 

Nothing will be 'caught' in the tunnel, but we can gather information about what creatures are out and about in the sanctuary.

There are approximatey 1200 tunnels spread over the 230 hectares.

The tunnels in high risk areas (on the fence line and road edge and public areas) always have cards in them (all year round) and are monitored weekly. If an incident occurs (rodent prints are found) then traps will be put out in the area that they were found.

This method works really well at Lake Rotokare.

Last Sunday saw 10 volunteers (including me) and lake staff  start the mammoth task of putting the cards out. During this week we have continued to put them out. This Sunday we will hopefully get a really good turn out of helpers and will be able to gather most of the cards back in.
I'm really hoping that I will stumble across some lizard prints!!!

Below are some photos of the team in action.


Jenny and Chauncy cutting up rabbit meat and the cards all sorted into bundles

 



Many thanks to Ray for bringing his boat to rapidly deploy us into the field! about 2 minutes to get from one side of the lake to the other instead of a half hour walk. Lots of work time saved!

 

looking back to the office buildings across the lake.

Was super excited to meet this wee one while I was out. There are very few Robin at Lake Rotokare.

 

While out with Litchie this week he also pointed these out to me ....
read on to find out what they are, next photo might give you a clue

Litchie checking a burrow on the side of the walking track- it was well cobwebbed over.

 

t

Each card has a lot of information written on it- this is really important when we look at the cards after they have been collected. If there are prints we want to investigate we know exactly where the card came from.

Re-labelling each tunnel is an important part of the process. Each tunnel is labelled with the name of the area, line number and tunnel number. This tunnel is number 60 on the lake edge (that's what the L stands for) All this information is written onto the card that goes inside.

 

 

I certainly found out about muscles I didn't know I had this week while out 'tunneling.' It was pretty physcial work and made me realise how mega unfit I am! However I didn't complain I just got on with this vitaly important job. This monitoring is integral to maintaining the 'pest-free' status that Lake Rotokare is proud to be able to call itself.

 

 

Tracking tunnels are a really great way to find out what critters are living in your very own backyard. Lots of schools make their own and have them out and about for students to monitor what is in their school grounds..

If you are intersted in making your own here is a link on how to:

http://www.doc.govt.nz/getting-involved/home-and-garden/track-down-your-garden-pests/

Real world learning for our kids- another easy way to get them interested in science :)

 

ps- those funny holes in the ground- kiwi probe holes!!!



 

A night in the bush- kiwi calling

Last night I had the opportunity to go 'kiwi calling.' Another name for this is a kiwi survey.
Quite simply we were listening for any kiwi calls.

I spent a bit of time earlier this week listening to the 2 very different calls that kiwi make depending on their sex. Below are two links so you can hear the difference between them. (Thanks to DOC)

http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/conservation/native-animals/birds/kiwi-cd/male-ni-brown-kiwi.mp3

http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/conservation/native-animals/birds/kiwi-cd/female-ni-brown-kiwi.mp3


There were 9 of us that went last night, all volunteers that are involved with the kiwi work that is being done at Rotokare and surrounding area.
I was teamed up with kiwi guru Jenny. (You may have read about Jenny in my earlier post about my amazing kiwi experience.) 
The team met at the Eltham library and discussed our plan of attack for the night. We would be travelling not to Rotokare this time, but a piece of bush adjoining the reserve called the Totara Block.
This is an area of bush that is on private properties but is looked after by the local Forest and Bird Society. (I have put a link below so you can read more about what they are doing.)

http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/branches/south-Taranaki

Travelling into our spot was quite an adventure! A 30 minute drive mostly on gravel road. Then into a grunty 4 wheel drive up into the bush (glad I had my seat belt on and it was a pretty hardcore track. Then, when the track got too small for the 4WD we then hopped onto the back of a quad bike for another 10 or so minutes into our final spot.

Kiwi calling is typically carried out over a 2 hour period within the first 4 hours of the sun
going down. This is when kiwi are most vocal. A kiwi call can be heard over quite a large distance (up to a couple of kms in perfect conditions)
Jenny and I arrived at our spot about 7:45. We heard a lot of morepork in the next half hour. Darkness came about 8 (a little earlier than normal.)
Then we waited....
                          ...... and waited .......
                                                 ...................and waited......

Sadly for Jenny and I we heard no kiwi!  2 of the team did hear some though.
One was in the direction of Lake Rotokare and one was further south-east of where we were. The team were quite spread out around the edges of the Totara Block. As the night crept upon us it was neat to see the headlamps of our team around the ridges.

How the survey works is that a team of people are surrounding an area. If a kiwi call is heard, everyone documents the time, takes a compass bearing to where they heard the call and writes what type of call was heard. Then after the night finishes, all the compass points are triangulated on a map of the area. If everyone is correct with their bearings, a location can be determined.
The next step (if a kiwi needs to be captured for further monitoring) a kiwi catcher goes into the area and searches it for the burrow.

This is looking northwest from our spot. The bush on the ridge in the back is the edge of Lake Rotokare.

 

This is looking south west from our spot.
 

  

looking north from our spot. This country is rough!

Our spot for the night. After going prepared to sit on the ground for a few hours, we were pleasantly surprised to find a picnic table :)

The purpose of the night was really just data gathering. To see what was there or wasn't there. Hearing nothing does not mean that the kiwi are not there, just means we need to go back more and listen again. Kiwi calls have been heard in the area in the past. The Totara block is an area that kiwi may be released into in the future.  The forest and bird team are doing a fabulous job monitoring and trapping and doing their utmost to restore this piece of land to its original state.
This is another example of volunteers driving a project because of passion for the cause.

I really enjoyed spending the night in silence, sitting in the dark just listening. It certainly doesn't sounds like exciting entertainment on a Friday night but I can't wait for next time!

Country girl in the city - a week in Dunedin

Having never been to Dunedin before the idea of going down for a week long course was quite exciting.
Then I heard it was going to be a 'leadership' course, I thought that sounded cool! Leadership courses I have been on in the past have included abseiling, rock climbing, kayaking, team building etc.... then we get told that NO, it wouldn't be that sort of course- 5 days in the classroom and homework each night!!!

 I wasn't too sure of what to expect from the course. I understood from the surveys we had to complete before we went that we would undergo a character assassination during the course! However I am very pleased to report that after the assassination on Tuesday we spent the rest of the week rebuilding and learning how to harness the leader within.
The course is part of a MBA, so quite high levelled thinking was going to be required!

We were accommodated in the Otago University Executive Residence which is very close to the university. It was a wonderful place to stay, the staff were friendly and welcoming and nothing was too much trouble. The food was plentiful (and drinks were very reasonably priced )

Otago University Executive Residence

 

Having such a lovely place to stay really made staying away from the kids a little bit easier. I took my tablet for a walk around the hotel one night when I was skyping the kids and they were thrilled to meet a few of my colleagues and getting to see where I was staying. One night Ryan got to watch a helicopter land on the helipad of the hospital which you could see from my room. (Both kids thought it was pretty cool that mum had her own toilet and shower in her room)

Otago University Clock tower

 

Topics on the course ranged from leadership types, leadership vs. management, visions, creativity, barriers to change, personality traits, resilience, planning, values, creativity and much much more.

 

The course was centred around the book called "The leadership Challenge" by Kouzes and Posner. They describe leaders as having 5 dimensions to be able to do what they do.

During the course we thoroughly looked into each of the dimensions (Modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act and encouraging the heart). 

Having read the book before going on the course, I had my head around the dimensions before I went but found that through delving deeply into them over the period of the week I really began to understand what a great book this is. Their catch phrase is "how to make extraordinary things happen in organisations." Watch out Rawhitiroa, I have a new mission!!!!   

 

The thing I enjoyed most about the course content was getting time to delve deeply into my personal values and working out how they fit with colleagues, my school and my community. Having unearthed those values, I am moving into the future really confident about making

decisions and knowing that my decisions are based on my deeply engrained values and beliefs.

While the days were long and tiresome, we did manage to get out and about on Wednesday night. We were taken for a tour of the city in a fleet of classic jaguar cars. We got to see many of Dunedin's famous landmarks, our driver Jeff was a very knowledgeable gentleman who always had a story or two to share about the places we went . Sadly no time to visit cadburys or speights factories though!



Our cars in front of the Otago Railway station.

from the back of the Daimler- 5 in the back and 1 in the front

 

I got to travel in the 1971 Daimler (picture on the right in the top picture). A car with a very colourful history. It used to be the mayor of Auckland's official car but the Queen and Nelson Mandela have also travelled in it. It was rather strange having people standing on the side of the road taking photos of us driving past!

 

Baldwin Street was lots of fun. For those of you that don't know it is the world's steepest street. Over 161 metres it climbs 47.22 metres in height! The steepest section of the street has the gradient of 1 in 2.86. I certainly knew I was alive when I got to the top! I was blown away when I found out (after I walked up it) that the world record for a climb and descent is just under 13 seconds.... yip madness! This record has been in place since 1994.

 

Doesn't look too bad aye.... in a photo, I stood at the bottom in awe of the site in front of me

I did it, I did it!!

 

Dinner out that night was lovely. Our lecturers and course organisers joined us for the evening. We were treated to an Italian experience- Etrusco. I challenged myself to try everything on offer... even artichoke! I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was.

I was certainly glad that I wasn't wearing restricting clothing!!! (am very glad that a few of us walked back to the hotel afterwards, I don't think I would have been able to sleep on such a full tummy :)  

 

 

 

Not straight to sleep though- back to our rooms to do homework....

(see kids- even the teachers have to do it!)

 

The rest of the week went relatively quickly. Making a plan for leading within our schools was the big focus for Friday. Presenting it to our peers and then developing it further was a challenge but certainly rewarding.  I am really looking forward to being able to bring about some amazing science learning in my school when I finish my time at Lake Rotokare.

 

 

Being presented with my certificate of completion



When I reflect back on the week, I can't help but feel extremely proud of myself. When I was initially thinking of applying for a fellowship I almost didn't go through with it as the fact  I was going to have to spend a week away from my children was almost too daunting to think about.

The longest I have been away from them in 7 years is 3 nights! (Obviously I did it though or I wouldn't be writing this)

 On Tuesday night I was ready to come home.  2 long days, heavy workload, loads of theory and too much food (ok so that was my fault lol.)  What was a teacher from a little country school that just liked to teach science doing on this course with all these amazing people??? It took me another day to realise that I too am a pretty amazing person and I belonged there with them.

Being surrounded by such an amazing group of people was what held me together and kept me going.

 

Big thanks to all the group "Bs" for helping me through the course, big thanks to the staff and lecturers at the Otago Buisness School and last but not least, a big thanks to my amazing support team in Hawera!

                           He aha te mea nui?                      He tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

What is the most important thing?        It is people, it is people, it is people.

Group 'B' (stands for brilliant) on top of Signal hill. Check out Anna's hair (3rd from the right at the back) shows how strong the wind was blowing.

Now back to the Lake!!! Can't wait.
 

 

 

 

All for a good cause- taking action!

One of the big things that I am trying to do with my 'science' is getting people (in particular my students) involved with REAL science projects.
I want them to see how doing small things can lead to big things and that by doing 'something' it can make a difference.

In a few months time the Rotokare Trust are planning on re-introducing a population of Tieke (Saddleback) and Popokatea (whitehead.) This is a mammoth undertaking logistically, financially and emotionally.
The saddleback has been absent from the skys of Taranaki for over 150 years. They were almost extinct altogether as recently as 1964 where they only existed on one island (Hen Island in the Hen and Chicken Islands.)
Since then the birds have been carefully looked after and slowly being translocated back into more areas in NZ.
The birds that will be calling Rotokare home are coming mainly from Little Barrier Island and a few from Bushy Park (a fenced sanctuary near Wanganui.)

One of the logistical issues we face moving these birds from such a distance is food. We may need to feed them for between 7-12 days depending on weather.

So what do these birds like to eat you ask?

 

these wee creatures- meal worms. For the translocation we will need about 40,000 of them!! Most of that amount will be purchased from a supplier, but we are aiming to breed as many as we can. The worms will also be used for feeding lizards and when we are monitoring our North Island Robin (I will write a blog about this adventure next month)

 

So, back to the meal worms.

Melissa had started a breeding programme at the lake before I started, and one of the jobs I have taken on is to feed them and sort them. One thing about meal worms is that they grow quite fast, meaning that I started to see numbers multiplying soon after I started.

We have our worms set up in a set up in a set of plastic drawers (with vents on the side)

  

 

 

 

There is no way that we will be able to produce the amount of meal worms we need on our own! So, we have enlisted the help of our community. The Rotokare Community is full of people happy to help out in any way needed, so there were plenty of willing hands when we put out the request to help with the meal worms.

Melissa and I gathered the equipment we needed and started creating 'home kits' we also spent part of one sunday at the lake with the volunteers that were working that day to help them create their own.

 

 

 

Ryan (my son) creating one of his boxes

2 sets of boxes ready to come home with us.

 

Worms added and fed for a week.

 

When we bought our first lot of worms home they were approximately 10mm long, 2 weeks later they have tripled in size! They live in our hot water cupboard (which must be the perfect temperature)

Another couple of weeks and they should be starting to move into the next phase of their lives- pupa.

 

If anyone reading this post would like to join the crusade to feed our birds, please let me know! We can supply everything you need :)

Ryan's class are going to help us out and look after a set of worms for us and my school are soon to start as well! While we aren't able to promise any reward for being part of this breeding programme, we hope that in the future we can pay our helpers back by inviting them out to the lake to see the birds, help with Robin monitoring or feeding the lizards.

 

Engaging our children with science is one of big pushes in science education, I think the meal worm breeding is such a good opportunity to show how important science is, how much fun it can be and how small actions can have big impacts.

 

 

With the onset of cooler weather, Melissa and I decided that our worms may be getting colder, on Friday afternoon I decided to insulate our drawers ... it won't be winning any design awards but hopefully it will keep the worms a tad warmer so they keep breeding.