Welcome again to the Friends of Flora (FoF) newsletter. This one brings more news of our efforts to bring the birdsong and all the rest of the biodiversity – mistletoe, Powelliphanta snails, alpine lizards and so on back to the Flora.

Radios are go! Saturday 18 October was both a FoF trap monitoring day and the annual Flora roadworks day. Prior to embarking on this work FoF and DOC had a brief training session on the new Vertex handheld radios and the very first FoF radio “sched” using these new radios went ahead later that morning. A few bugs will be ironed out around the use of the radios to make phone calls but meanwhile here’s a few handy hints:

• Announce who you want to speak to, then announce who you are, eg “Brian Jones, Brian Jones from Marjorie Hood.”
• Always keep them turned on - Bill! They are worse than useless if turned off, as people may be getting frustrated trying to contact you.
• Arrange to use Channel 15 if you are talking to other members of your team on the same line, or other situations where you are within “line of sight” usually a few km depending on the terrain.

"Wayne and Tich, Wayne and Tich from Bill!” Bill Rooke makes a call with one of the 5 new radios, watched by Des and Peter.

The roadworks went well, with many potholes filled in and culverts cleared, as did the monitoring with the following results:

Pest Parade hits record low! Pest kills for September 2008 were:

Stoats: 0 (total 489 since Feb 2002),
Rats: just 5 (total 1695),
Mice: 0 (total 832)
Possums 0 (total 379)

Our lowest catch ever! Hopes are high that, with a near absence of predators, this spring’s bird breeding will be very successful.

Helpful bugs of the Flora. Frequently encountered in the process of checking traps in the Flora are some useful invertebrates, the primitive “Necrophilus” beetles. The cadaver-eating natives usually only have time to get part of the job done before a FoF-er flicks their dinner into the bush.

“We only have the one species in NZ, named "Necrophilus" prolongatus. Necrophilus is in inverted commas to indicate that it is now generally accepted that this is an incorrect genus placement for our species, but no one has yet got around to naming and describing a new genus for it. They have an unusual distribution in that they are almost all found in Northern Hemisphere temperate zones, except for ours.” says DOC’s local entomologist Ian Millar. Also encountered around traps are various native cockroaches of the family Blattidae, not cadaver-eaters, but who just like the environment our trap boxes offer. Keep an eye out also for the evocatively-named devils coach horse beetles (Staphylinus spp.) long earwig-like beetles with blazing red eyes.

A huddle of Necrophilus beetles on the edge of a FoF trap box

Thanks to our new web sponsor. The owners of WeDoWebsites web hosting, Anne and Gary, have very kindly donated our web space for our Friends of Flora website. WeDoWebsites are a local web hosting company in the Nelson area and they enjoy the Flora area and what the Friends are doing there. Thanks to both of them for their donation.

And thanks again from Debs. Forest and Bird’s Regional Field Officer Debs Martin writes:
Thanks again for this newsletter – very informative. A favourite area for my daughter and I to spend time in … even took my 84 year old mother up there last year. Such a great introduction to the wilds of Kahurangi National Park – in such an accessible way. Having the densities of snails and birdlife so close to a road end – made possible by the trapping – is invaluable. Thanks to FoF for all the voluntary work you continue to do … aren’t we altruistic beasts??

That’s all for this issue. Remember, monitoring takes place on the last two weekends of each month.

Ivan Rogers, FoF committee