Top picture: David demonstrating his kiwi tracking skills
July 20 – The 2022-23 season is under way with six nests on the go. Our first hatch is due around 11 September, with a raid about 21 September. Fortnightly monitoring of Makahu Saddle and Middle Hill would be good at this stage, moving to weekly as we get closer to hatch dates.
Everyone’s looking forward to getting back to business as usual and having chicks back in the crèche. The crèche team has been beavering away with maintenance, trapping and mice control. With the support of Pan Pac and George from Guthrie Smith, the big open blackberry patches have been sprayed, which should make the health checks easier to do once the dead stuff has broken down. We have (another) starling control operation coming up soon, which hopefully will see those pests moved on.
We’re building up a maintenance team at the crèche with Phil Kay leading the team. It’s great to have Mackenzie and dad Gary, and Richard on the team. Mackenzie and Gary maintain the right-hand fenceline traps to the back gate, and Richard maintains the lake trapline. If you know of anyone that’d be interested in checking the Thomas track and left fenceline on a monthly basis or being part of a regular crèche maintenance team, please get in touch. There are plenty of maintenance opportunities available.
We also welcome Grant to our Kaweka trapping team. It was great to have Amy join us for monitoring, and we’re looking forward to catching up with Steve again soon, the Te Ngahere team, Ed and Vanessa.
Leave a Reply