Sir Peter Blake DOC Ambassadorship - Final Week
To start off my final week I had an office day focussing on kiwi audio from different locations. I had to sift through these recordings to find any kiwi calls which may have been recorded. I downloaded them to an application called Audacity where I viewed them as a spectrogram (a visual representation of the frequencies in the audio file). This meant that I could go through to find a visual representation of a kiwi call. Sadly, as I was new to this, my first day ‘kiwi calls’ ended up being background noise.
Tuesday was the day that cyclone Gita decided to pass through. We had a workshop day planned for this so that we were safe and warm inside. First, I made stoat bedding lures, as part of a current trial between two different lures (our compressed rabbit muesli bars and the bedding). For these lures we receive bedding from Lincolns captively bred female stoats (it looks like wool/polyester). Five grams is weighed out and separated into 10 even balls of bedding. These are then put inside little tea strainers to keep the bedding together. My next task was refilling visual lure containers for possum traps. These are tubes of a blue sticky substance which we smear up the tree leading to a trap. It simply lures the possums in with a visual cue. Then, I washed off our aniseed possum lures which are made from either clay or dough and soaked in aniseed. These tend to alternate on traplines, to see whether one type of lure lasts longer or works better. After a morning tea break I did some more kiwi audios, cleaned the workshop and then helped with tracking card species identification. These cards were pulled in from our days over at Lake Rotoroa. We were looking for prints on the cards and identifying which species made that print. Of all the prints the hedgehog was the creepiest looking as they looked quite like a child had put their hand on the ink pad. The insect tracks were the coolest, especially weta as you could see the different parts of their legs. On these pads we saw mice, rats, stoats, insects, weta, possum and hedgehogs as well as wasps and maggots. It was expected that we would get a lot of pests through these tunnels due to their being no introduced species control around Lake Rotoroa.
On Wednesday cyclone Gita was still prominent with heavy rainfall broken up with sun showers. We headed into the field- Emma Williams and I did 55x traps along a lovely trapline which partially followed the outskirts of a farm. We were surprised to find not many traps had pests in them, most of those that did were rats. Although we got soaking wet out in the field it was a great walk and nice to get out of the office again this week. On our return to office we were allowed to warm up for a bit at Cummings Cottage and have lunch. For the afternoon I hit the kiwi audios again and finally found a kiwi call! Yay!
Thursday was my last full day of work, in the morning I did some more kiwi calls (I completed 300 over this week). After morning tea, I headed out with Emma McCool to maintain a trapline. This was lots of fun, we headed out with a scrub bar, secateurs, nails, flagging tape and new track triangles to make sure the traps were easier to spot along the line. I loved learning how to scrub bar, cutting away all the blackberry and objects 1m either end of the trap. This meant that the traps were easier to see, check and rebait. Along the way we were also checking the markings for the line were marked well, if not we added new markers and triangles, and wrote the trap numbers again clearly. That night I had a lovely farewell dinner with a few of the staff members.
Friday morning, I packed my gear, returned my DOC pack, hi-vis, radio, GPS, first aid kit and personal locator beacon. It was a full DOC staff meeting this morning so there was a morning tea on just before I left. I got to say a big thankyou to the wonderful staff which made my time in Saint Arnaud one to remember and was gifted a beautiful volunteer for conservation drink bottle, bag and thankyou letter. Emma McCool made me a delicious farewell banana cake and there were some homemade scones as well! It was hard to leave after growing so attached to the awesome team at DOC and Saint Arnaud itself. I have had the most incredible time here.
I would like to say a huge thankyou to those who made this journey possible. To the Sir Peter Blake Trust for the huge opportunities you give to young environmental New Zealanders and for selecting Marie and I as Friends of Rotoiti DOC Ambassadors. To the team at DOC, you have been so supportive, friendly and fun! I am so glad to have met you all and to have seen the dedication everyone has for their job and conservation in Aotearoa. I do strive to one day be as fit as you guys climbing up those hills! To my family and friends, you have all played a huge part in my journey, I couldn’t have gotten here without your support, kindness, enthusiasm and understanding. To Marie, thankyou for being an incredible roommate and friend along this journey. I am so glad to have spent it with someone so kind, honest and relatable. You helped me see a different side of every situation, pulled me out of my comfort zone and helped me feel right at home.
Saint Arnaud, I am sure you will see me again soon!
