A warm winter welcome to our Friends of Flora (FoF), sent to keep you in touch with our efforts to bring the birdlife back to the Flora.

Expansion to begin. Plans are well advanced for expansion of our pest trapping efforts beyond the Flora Stream region of the Kahurangi National Park. Four new traplines are planned to be 'rolled out' over the coming year or two. The first of these will be a new 2.3km 'K' Line to be situated on the true left of the Takaka river from Upper Junction to Lower Junction. FoF will survey and install traps at 100m intervals ready to provide a secure environment for the next whio release planned by DoC for March 2006. As reported last month, DoC plans to capture wild-reared fledglings of the 'ten buck duck' from the Rolling River breeding population in January. Further trap lines are to be surveyed with the intention of having no stoat in this corner of Kahurangi further than 500m from one of our traps and, hopefully, its quick demise!

Calling all kiwi. FoF committee members Kim Turner and Ivan Rogers spent a chilly night on and around Mt Arthur last Sunday brodacasting a tape of male great spotted kiwi/roa calls. The purpose of this exercise is to determine the presence or absence of the bird within the FoF/DoC pest trapping area. The intrepid FoF-ers got quite a surprise when the tape was answered at very close quarters about 600m below the Mt Arthur hut. The birds calling back were, however, a pair (or possibly two pairs) of weka that followed the taped calls down the hill for several minutes before losing interest. Good to see weka reliably back around Mt Arthur! FoF will continue the kiwi survey in better weather.

Pest program progress. Our latest pest kill figures for June were: 5 stoats (total since Feb 2002 = 231) 21 rats (total 481) 4 mice (total 504) 4 possums (total since June 2004 = 129).

And no further addition to the score for cats and weasels. Again, a very low mouse kill, with only 4.6% of the 504 being caught so far this year. But that's not the full picture. To these totals can be added the kill figures for those trap lines for which our partner DoC has responsibility. This comes to a further 105 stoats and 127 rats (D, E, H and upper I Line, Feb 2004 - April 2005)

Website launch soon. After falling off our agenda for the past couple of years, new committee member Peter Adams has within weeks got our website sorted out, with some help from Maryann Ewers and Kim Turner. Any day soon it will be accessible at www.fof.org.nz which seems not to be already taken...

Free First Aid. Lyn Harris-Hogan of Meditrain reminds us that: "We're supposedly in the middle of winter, not wanting to venture out. However this is a good time to consider participating in a first aid course in preparation for spring and summer that are not too far away! Here are the dates of forthcoming Workplace First Aid courses which include recertification courses: July 28th/29th. August 8th/9th, 15th/16th, 20th/21st and 27th/28th Please note: Maximum number for these classes is 20 so be quick and register now. To be eligible for the FREE first aid courses each participant needs toprovide proof of NZ Citizenship or NZ Residency by bringing their birth certificate or passport. Participants requiring 'recertification' attend the first day of a 2 day course and need to bring their current/expired first aid certificate which should be no older that 2 years 3 months." Previous courses have been conducted at NMIT. Contact Lyn at lynhh.motivate@xtra.co.nz

That seems to be all our news for July. We'll be in touch again soon.

Ivan Rogers FoF Committee