Dear Friends of Flora (FoF) and supporters, here is our our email newsletter No.10, keeping you in touch with our efforts to bring the birdlife back to the Flora.

Duck drama. FoF-ers and Bush and Beyonders Bill and Maryann had a recent encounter with whio: "On walking the Heaphy last week, we were lucky to see a Whio sight not often seen these days, or maybe occurring because there aren't many of these female ducks left. In a coastal river (Wekakura) we saw three Blue duck where we have never seen them before. A banded pair and an unbanded male. The two males were fighting over the female in an amazing display. Like two fighter planes! Up and down the river, under the bridge and onto the coast. Flying high and into each other, trying to knock the other down, whilst the female sat nonchalantly by! We watched this for half an hour until we had to move on. As someone said to us - Don't they realise they are endangered and have to look after each other!"

Bush birds recovering The numbers have been crunched and some encouraging trends are evident. On the 'I' line (just below Flora carpark to Gridiron shelter) average records of three 'indicator' bird species have increased per monitoring over the past 30 months:

Rifleman/titipounamu - from 5 ((March 2002) to 15 (September 2004)

South Island tit/miro miro - from 6 to 11

South Island robin/toutouwai - from 4 to 6.

Monitoring of bird calls and sightings are conducted for 1 minute only every 200m along 'I' line each monitoring - a period of 40 minutes within a five hour stretch each month. Birds of the above species are not recorded if seen or heard outside the monitoring minute.

Pest parade Yes, September was officially our first month with a zero stoat catch! Rats and mice were low too at 8 and 7 respectively, so possums were tops at 12. So the total pest kill since Feb 2002 stands at:

Stoats: 176 Rats: 337 Mice: 474 Possums: 46

Plus a smaller bag of cats, weasels and wasps.

Badges Our glamorous 'whio' cloth badges are still available form Wayne Elias (528 6448) for $10 a pop. What better way to make a donation to Friends of Flora?

That's all for October. We'll be in touch soon.

Ivan Rogers FoF Committee