Welcome again to the Friends of Flora (FoF) newsletter for July/August 2007 which brings you the latest news on our efforts to bring the birdsong back to the Flora.

Stop the “snot”. No-one wants to be responsible for furthering the spread of “rock snot” (Didymospenia geminata). While it is present in the Takaka and Motueka Rivers, some simple precautions will keep it out of the Flora Stream. Volunteers driving vehicles past the Flora Hut and crossing Holmwood, Horseshoe and Gridiron Creeks should observe the “Check, Clean, Dry” regime being promoted to contain didymo. If your vehicle (or your boots!) has been in a didymo-affected river (such as driving to your whitebaiting spot in the Motueka) make sure its chassis has been cleaned with 5% detergent solution and dried for 48 hours. Access to DOC’s drive-through didymo car wash unit will be available for the September monitoring.

Power to the People. FoF was the recipient of a commendation for an outstanding contribution to the region in the Heritage and Environment section of this year’s TrustPower Nelson Tasman Community Awards. With the commendation came a power voucher for $100, which Richmond-based volunteer John McCartin has offered to buy at face value, giving FoF more dollars for our work in the Flora.

Voles in the dales. FoF volunteer Cherie Fenemor writes from Malham Tarn field centre:

Finishing up my schooling at the end of 2006 I needed a new challenge away from everything I knew… that wish landed me in the middle of nowhere in England. I have taken up a GAP placement at Malham Tarn field centre in the Yorkshire dales. This is an environmental field centre which mostly caters for biology and geography school groups but also adult groups studying anything from bats, mosses and birds to poetry and fly fishing. I spend my days doing lots of little jobs around the place such as meteorological readings (yes rain for 21 days straight and they call this summer), cleaning classrooms, checking the kilner light trap (catches moths to be studied elsewhere), organising the waterproof store, collecting equipment and lots of other things. When there are groups which are suitable for me to help out with (mostly little kids) I get to go out to exciting places and do exciting things…such as; kick sampling for bugs in streams, pond dipping, caving, urban development, flooding, geography of rivers,

Mammal trapping may be the thing most in contrast (to the Flora!) that I could possibly be involved in. This consists of setting mammal traps in the forest or woods (not bush) over night and seeing what we catch in the mornings. The catch is either wood mice or bank voles which are then placed in plastic bags and handed round to discuss the adaptations of the animals for living in such an environment. Then they are kindly released back into the woods to catch another day. Another contrast is to see stoats, rabbits and deer all running round in the environment they are meant to be in and therefore are appreciated and looked upon excitedly and are a treat for city kids to see.

Keep up the good work and I can’t wait to join you again soon.

Do your bit for Kea and Kaka Both of these nationally endangered large parrots are present in the Flora. Kea are often encountered around the Mt Arthur hut or heard calling flying high overhead on any of our traplines. South Island kaka are less frequently seen, but keep an ear out for the sound of them tearing up decaying branches above you in search of grubs. Kaka are subject to a DOC national recovery program. Like whio, females are highly vulnerable to stoat predation on the nest. Kea, whose numbers in the wild are estimated to be between only 1,000 and 5,000 are managed by DOC to identify and band “troublemakers”, usually juvenile males, who get into mischief at alpine carparks etc. To assist in their recovery all observations of these birds should be entered onto the I Line bird monitoring sheets and trap monitoring sheets (electronic and hard copy) for other lines. Check out DOC’s website for more info.

Poignantly, there is an extinct kaka, the Norfolk Island kaka. Hunted for food and captured as pets by convicts and their jailers, the last bird died in captivity in London in 1851.

Stoat 400. Another bad winter in the Flora meant the abandonment of the June monitoring and the July monitoring had to be carried out on a “whenever you can make it” basis. So the combined pest kills for these months were:

Stoats 3 (total 401 since February 2002)
Rats – 33 (total 1366)
Mice – 4 (total 806)
Possums – 9 (total 290 since June 2004)

A nice milestone has been reached with our 400th stoat kill. In contrast, the same two months last winter netted a much higher catch of 8 stoats, 71 rats, 11 mice and 10 possums.

Whio newsflash. Just the evening before putting this newsletter together, DOC rangers caught and banded the Flora’s resident female Maryann’s wild partner and, for the record, have named him Bill. In the process a new wild pair was encountered in Balloon Creek. With two resident pairs and several spare males, our objective of establishing a breeding population of five pair of whio in the Flora grows a little nearer.

That’s all for this month. Remember, monitoring weekends are the last two weekends of each month.

Ivan Rogers,
FoF Committee