Welcome again to the Friends of Flora (FoF) newsletter (belatedly) for April 2007.

Thank you to the readers who completed the survey form attached to last month’s newsletter. We’ve attached it again. So if you did not get a chance to fill it in, please take a few minutes to do so.

Dear Volunteer,
The Friends of Flora Committee has agreed to participate in a study by Cambridge University and the Waikato University of technology. We are surveying New Zealanders to better understand how they value and use New Zealand’s natural environments. Please take time to read the attached pdf, read the two-sentence statement, fill in the one-page survey form and send it back to the FoF secretary either by post or in person. The survey is anonymous, short and the whole process should only take 15 minutes. Unfortunately it was not possible to devise a survey form that could be operated electronically, given the considerable variation in software available to home computer users. Consequently we are asking you to print and post a hard copy. I appreciate the extra effort this will take, but hope that you are able to take the time to help us better understand the connection between people and nature. Many thanks for your help in this project.
Dr. Robert Ewers, Conservation Science Group, University of Cambridge, UK.

More on this survey in a coming newsletter.

To open the survey in a new window click here.
When completed, please post to Maryann Ewers, 35 School Rd, RD 3 Motueka, 7198

Call from Cobb Wren Group. A hardy group of volunteers have been trapping stoats in Henderson Basin in the upper Cobb Valley for many years, while monitoring and banding the local remnant Rock Wren population. A study document published by the group shows these rare wrens are hanging on and still breeding. Several other stoat trapping lines have been placed in the Cobb Valley already and there is a vision of creating a protected area that will border on the FoF area. The Cobb group is considering putting in a new line in the Round Lake – Chaffey Stream area. This would be monitored on a bi-monthly basis and probably not at all in winter. If any fit and experienced readers are interested in being helping hands on this line please contact Bill Rooke via FoF. Putting your name forward need not be a firm commitment – just a list of people to call on if the Cobb group are short at anytime.

Big-headed, big-footed, big-hearted Robins. The Robin/toutouwai (Petroica australis) is one of the most familiar and engaging birds of the Flora, typically following volunteers around as they check the traps. Characterised by their incredible boldness and cheekiness, they are fearless enough to even hop onto one’s boots. These birds stick close to the forest floor where they feed on invertebrates. They are very vocal and produce a variety of calls, some very loud, from a covered situation. They are usually silent when they approach humans. The calling is, of course, territorial and they aggressively chase and threaten other toutouwai intruders. Their nesting habits - fairly low in tree hollows and forks, with the female incubating and being fed by the male - render them vulnerable to stoat and rat predation, so their sizeable presence in the Flora must be due in part to our trapping efforts. There are 2 subspecies – North and South Island. In the same genus Petroica are the five subspecies of tomtits/miro miro and the endangered Chatham Island or Black Robin. All have typically oversize feet and big heads, in fact the scientific name for the tomit (P. macrocephala) means, literally ‘big - head’!
(picture by Wayne Elia)

The War on Pests. The pest kill for March 2007 was:
Stoats only 3 (total 384 since February 2002)
Rats – 45 (total 1270)
Mice – 11 (total 786)
Possums – 3 (total 269 since June 2004)

All these figures are down on March 2006 when we rid the Flora of 10 stoats, 55 rats, 15 mice and 4 possums.

For those of you in charge of documenting each monitoring, an alternative to the paper form is the electronic form - email Bill Rooke at bushandbeyond@xtra.co.nz or bill@fof.org.nz.

Art from Vermin. Ever wondered what happened to all those stoats we caught off I Line in 2002/3? No, you probably haven’t wondered, but those that didn’t get dissected (to determine their stomach contents) ended up in my freezer taking up valuable space. Then I had a yarn with Kina sculptor Darryl Frost, who figured he could create something with them. Two years of mummifying the stoat corpses in his pottery kiln later, Darryl has come up with ‘Kill, Kill, Kill’ a work destined for the Annual Wallace Art Awards. The work features 45 mummified stoats embalmed in resin and set in a painted steel drum. Of his rather macabre and unsettling work Darryl says: “While it’s about war, pit bulls, P and all ‘worlds of kill’ for me it’s really about a native forest and how we need to protect that.” Darryl has been creating sculpture for 20 years and is represented in major collections nationally and overseas.
(detail from ‘Kill, Kill, Kill’)

AGM Our Annual General Meeting will be held, like last year’s, at Parklands School technical block on Wednesday 23 May at 7.30pm. All volunteers and interested parties are welcome. That’s all for this month. Remember, monitoring weekends are the last two weekends of each month

Ivan Rogers FoF Committee