Aurere Beach

Lovely day yesterday and the boys had been watching wall to wall dvds, so we took off for an evening fish at Aurere. Some of the omens were good: new moon, offshore wind, low swells, change of light. Others less so: falling tide, water as calm as a mill pond when we got there. But it was a good walk as usual and we even had the company of Stuart anmd Patrick for a change. Plus Amos for good luck.

I took my time on the walk in as I wanted to check the Awapoko River New Zealand Dotterels. There is a nationwide survey going on as we speak and I wa spriveleged to have bneen given a few beaches to check. The dotterel is shown in one of the pictures below. They are endemic to the North of New Zealand and numbers are down to 1500. They nest just above the tideline and so are at the mercy of 4WD cras, dogs plus the usual rampage of introduced predators. So their numbers are in decline on most beaches except for the most remote or those where they are given special protection. They get neither on the Awapoko as cars drive down it fairly regularly.

I watched the birds for a good hour and rekon that there were 3 pairs in the area. Not a bad number. Here's hoping that they successfully breed this year.

I took some pictures along the walk. The shot of the sun through the tress is a kiwi classic photo. The tree is the Pohutakawa or NZ Christmas Tree, so named because it has bright red flowers at Christmas time. They are the most amazing twisted gnarly trees that favour coastlines. There are some fantastic specimens growing on the walk along to Puketu Island.

When I finally caught up with the fisher folk, Chantelle had landed a medium sized kahawai. I had never seen the water so calm at Aurere. We came last week and the onshore swell was so high that I was worried for Eric's safety on the same rocks. The wind had dropped and we were all enjoying a lovely evening when someone spotted a school (?) of orcas or killer whales coming towards us. We had fantastic views of a small group of perhaps 6 whales including an adult with a calf. Unforgettable!

Chantelle has put some video footage on her FB page if you want to see what we saw.

 

 

 

 

camping

 

 

 

 

Just got back from a 2 day camping trip out at Diggers Valley. The theme this time was to escape "ediction" so all computers, mobiles, gameboys and other electronic devices were banned. Not as easy as it sounds to go without for 48 hours. Have you tried it?

Paddy secreted a gameboy in the car "just for the journey"! but Stuart ratted on him so it was ejected. We had (Ok I had) picked a couple of days where the forecast was good. It later turned out to be wrong and we were rained on most of the second day.

I have restricted the pictures to just 8 trying to get a variety and to illustrate the main attractions of our trip. We cooked over an open fire. Steak and baked pots for the first night and patsa and tomato sauce for night 2. The flat breads were pouplar and we had lots of cups of tea as well.

One of the boys' friends - Lance came along as well.

We did do some work in amongst all the fun. Clearing trees as Stephan cut them down with a chainsaw. I was impressed at the speed with which a skillfully operated and well maintained chainsaw could cut what would be a whole winter's supply of wood. It took 5 of us to move the brash and logs and we were not doing much standing around.

We had a go at trapping possums, using leghold traps set a metre up in a variety of trees. We checked these every morning at first light. They are not as humame as any other method of controlling possums. The possum gets a limb caught between 2 jaws and waits for you to come back to kill it. The main reason that they are used seems to be because the possum is alive until you come to kill it and so its fur can be removed with ease. It is more difficult to pluck a long dead possum. Plus the traps sell for $10 each which is a lot cheaper than most other control methods. We plan to use our traps elsewhere. Possums are a very serious pest over here. They kill native birds and strip native trees of their foliage killing them in the long run. New Zealand natives evolved in the absence of mammalian herbivores, so they do not have the defense mechananisms found in their ozzy or european cousins.

The flower is of the puriri, one of my favourite NZ native trees. It flowers pretty much all year round and is masive when fully grown.

Camping in the woods