Tracking Tunnels

A light morning rain left the surrounding bush damp and the high humidity left my skin feeling sticky. Walking past the tree ferns, their wet fronds transferred water droplets to my clothes. Keeping my head up, I was always searching for the next flourescent flagging tape marking the weareabouts of the next tunnel. Without the flagging tape and with no GPS, it would be almost impossible to find your way through the bush. It was nice working in the bush again to help with pest management. Just a month ago New Zealand was in lock down due the COVID pandemic.

Palm beach evening

Today I was helping Natasha who is an Auckland Council ranger in Waiheke's Whakanewha reserve monitor for pests using tracking tunnels. Ten tracking tunnel networks were more or less randomly placed in the reserve. Each tunnel network has ten tunnels that get an ink card and a spoonful of peanut butter in the center. Left overnight, hungry critters come to feast and unknowingly leave their footprints behind. The goal is to have rats tracking (RTI) at 5% and of course higher percentages of native species such as weta, skinks, and geckos. A tracking rate of 5% means that bait stations and DOC200s are doing their job. Rats tracking at less than 5% can be a good thing but can also lead to issues such as an explosion in mice. Ecology is funny like that.

Best practice would be to track before and after a bait pulse but due to limited resources, this generally is not feasible. Many groups aim to monitor quarterly and log their data to help develop pest trends overtime. It's always exciting pulling the tracking cards out of the tunnel. It's almost like opening a birthday present and hoping that you are going to get something cool. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't.

High visibility flouro tape to navigte your way through the bush.

Tracking tunnel with ID card.

Bait station that is filled with diphacinone poison.

A prepped tracking tunnel card with peanut butter. Apparently rodents have an expensive taste in food as Nutella is the most effective lure.

A tracking tunnel prepped and ready to collect the next day.

Hedgehog tracks

Larger footprints are rats with the more delicate ones being mice.

Mice footprints.

Te Matuku reserve foreshore. Apparently most Waiheke beaches looked like this before development.

Gecko Search

As silently as I can, I step cautiously along the trail behind my house. I walk at the pace of Iron Maiden's song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. A slow song, but one that I was trained to survey butterflies to and thought it might be appropriate for looking for geckos.

My neck sore from staring upwards, my headlamp is at its brightest setting as I use my binoculars to survey the forest canopy. The forest surrounding me is nearly silent save for the few Morepork owls and shorebird calls in the distance. The full moon shines through the canopy in some areas adding to the eerily silent landscape.

After an hour and a half of surveying the track behind my house which normally takes me 15 minutes to walk I failed to observe any geckos.

There are quite a few gecko species in New Zealand and they keep discovering more. Many of the species people do know about they know very little information on their life history. Because of their small size, ability to camouflage with surrounding vegetation, and many of them being nocturnal and arboreal, they are often referred to as a cryptic species. 

From the information I can gather, there are three species on Waiheke. Two of the species are nocturnal (forest gecko [Mokopirirakau granulatus] & Pacific gecko [Dactylocnemis pacificus]) and one is diurnal (Auckland green gecko [Naultinus elegans]). 

I've contacted several people regarding looking for a geckos and haven't heard anything back. This may partially be due to wanting to keep gecko populations secret as they are a target for poaching. I have realized that it's okay that I don't have any direction as I feel like it's a rite of passage to find one on my own.



Here are some other photos from the past few weeks. Many of the photos were taken on Tiritiri Matangi island.

New Zealand Bellbird (Anthornis melanura)

North Island Robin (Petroica longipes)

Stitchbird (Notiomystis cincta)

Whitehead (Mohoua albicilla)

North Island Kokako (Callaeas wilsoni)

Mainland Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae ssp. novaezelandiae)

North Island Saddleback (Philesturnus rufusater)

Variable Oystercatcher (Haematopus unicolor)

Wrinkle Leaf Pomaderris (Pomaderris rugosa) - one of New Zealand's rare plants.

White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae ssp. novaehollandiae)

Whakanewha Park Waiheke

Southern Reef Squid (Sepioteuthis australis)

A Walk In The Bush

Holding the leaves of a shrub in my hand, I stare blankly at them trying to diagnose what separates this plant from all the other species in the bush.

For someone new to the habitat seen in New Zealand it can be a bit overwhelming. As an outsider it all looks like large glossy leaves save for a few obvious New Zealand natives that are planted horticulturally in California. Even then, the scientific names are difficult to remember. More often then not they are genuses that I have never even heard of. 

Scrambling Pohuehue (Muehlenbeckia complexa)

Currently everything around me is a green blur. Just shades of green on branches of varying heights and shapes. 

Looking away from the shrub in my hand, I see a fern on the ground. I tell myself, "look a fern... at least I know what a fern looks like..." 

With this affirmation that I can at least identify the gestalt of some plants, I continue down the path with some positivity.

Rose maidenhair fern (Adiantum hispidulum)

Tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae)

Twiggy coprosma (Coprosma rhamnoides) - identifiable by oblong and lanceolate leaves on same branches.

Toro (Myrsine salinica)

Kohekohe (Dysoxylum spectabile)

NZ takes their biosecurity seriously and wants to stop the spread of diseases. Kauri dieback disease is caused by a similar organism to sudden oak death. 

Lemonwood (Pittosporum eugenoides)

The bush. 

Tank lily (Astelia hastata)

Taraire (Beilschmiedia tarairi) - many NZ plants take the common name from the Maori language.

Mahoe (Melicytius ramiflorus)

Kereru or New Zealand Pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae)

Coarse dosinia (Dosinia anus)

Tuatua (Paphies subtriangulata)

Onetangi beach Waiheke

Plenty of time for swims

Man O War Beach Waiheke

The California Channel Islands

It was one of those nights where the anticipation of the next day made it so I couldn't fall asleep. Or if I did fall asleep, it didn't feel like it.

It was around 4 in the morning when I heard jingling from my friend's house mate looking for the right key in the dark.

"Oh shit," I heard a startled voice say.

It was then that I realized that my college buddy Ryan never told his house mates that I was sleeping on his couch. Classic.

Lying there awake afterwards, the alarm went off just as expected. Blindly searching around with my hand I turned off the obnoxious noise.

The time had come to travel to the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. Considered to be the Galapagos of the northern hemisphere, it is one of the many biologically interesting places of the world. Just an hour off the coast of California, the islands have been separated long enough where many species have become endemic to the islands.

Both of us not having slept well, we downed an espresso shot and got on the road. It was just after 5 a.m., the sun was rising and there was already traffic on highway 1. Southern California never sleeps.

Stepping onto the boat, I wasn't sure what role to play. Am I the casual hiker that enjoys the outdoors or do I go full biologist and be the obnoxious person with binoculars, telephoto camera, and point and shoot? I decided to be casual about it but things changed quickly once the pod of dolphins appeared...

Hundreds of long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis) were seen in the channel crossing.

One of the many oil rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel. One of my college friends from the central valley originally thought they were Christmas trees the City had erected as they light up the channel at night.

California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) hauled out.

Scale.

Island tranquility. 

Santa Cruz Island wild buckwheat (Eriogonum arborescens) a species that is endemic to the Channel Islands.

Santa Cruz Island buckwheat flowers.

Island scrub-jay (Aphelocoma insularis) which is endemic to Santa Cruz Island.

Giant coreopsis (Coreopsis gigantea).

Ryan and I brought our snorkeling gear. Sunburst Anemone (Anthopleura sola) seen in the shallows.

One of my favorite sea creatures: Spanish Shawl (Flabellinopsis iodinea).

Ryan who is an avid backpacker and all around outdoorsmen. He recently completed the John Muir trail.

 

Isla Vista California. The old stomping grounds. 

Après-surf meal.