Love's Labour's Lost

How to relax after a hard day’s digging? Why, with a Shakespeare comedy, of course.

But wait…what’s this “hard day’s digging”? As part of my employer’s community involvement, we spend one day of the year volunteering. Our team also try to combine this with a team-building effort. Past years have included doing maintenance and cleaning at a kindergarten, and doing environmental work on Matiu/Somes Island.

This year’s activity was to help extend the Makara Peak mountain bike network. The network of tracks, for mountain bikers and for walkers, is entirely built by volunteers, under the supervision of the Department of Conservation. Our task on this day was to excavate a new track along a marked course. This is all done by manual labour – you can’t get diggers and excavators in to what is essentially bush terrain.

We started early, with me picking up a few colleagues along the way, then drove up to Karori, where we stopped at the Marsden Village Café for a bacon butty. We arrived at the end of the sealed road, and were then driven up the track to a place where we were to begin the new part. Almost immediately, there was a rocky outcrop, and the first team was delegated to break up the rock and make it passable. As we progressed further, more teams in groups of three or four were given various tasks. Ours was to cut into the ground to make a level track, at a height previously marked out. Part of this involved digging out rocks and roots of plants that had already been cut down. Pretty tiring work!

At lunchtime we downed tools and headed for a local pub, One Fat Bird, where we’d pre-booked for lunch. We sank a couple of well-earned beers as well. At around three we headed back to the city.

After dropping everyone off, I headed home to prepare the picnic for the evening show. After parking the car we walked up the hill through the graveyard to the Botanical Gardens, to The Dell. This is an area behind the café, where the Summer Shakespeare Trust put on a different play in the open air each year. This year, Love’s Labour’s Lost was the production.

We claimed a space on the grass and set up our picnic, then settled in to watch the play. It became apparent almost immediately that there was something up with this production: all the male characters had distinctly high-pitched voices, and all the female characters were suspiciously hirsute. Nicola explained to me that the play was set in France, but even so, I suspect that the director had switched the genders. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the director, Ania Upstill, is artistic director for a company call the Lord Lackbeards…I think there’s a clue in that name.

If you want to know what goes on in Love’s Labour’s Lost then read this synopsis. They seemed to get through it competently enough, and in the end they finished with a song and a dance. The whole thing finished up at around 9:15 and we walked back through the now-dark graveyard, and thence home.

Sirocco

On Wednesday evening, we drove up to Zealandia to go on a special tour to see Sirocco, New Zealand’s most famous kakapo.  Kakapo are one of three parrot species in New Zealand (along with kaka and kea), and are the world’s only flightless and nocturnal parrot. They are almost extinct, but with the help of a dedicated conservation effort their numbers have increased to 124. A few years ago it was thought that they were headed for extinction as the only known population was 18, and all male. However, another small population was found, and breeding is actively managed by conservationists.

Kakapo were once common throughout New Zealand, but being flightless, they were easy prey for firstly Maori, and later stoats introduced by Europeans. These had been brought in to control the rabbits, also introduced by Europeans in the 19^th century for food, hunting, and “to remind them of home”.  Stoats actually chose kakapo over rabbits as a preferred prey, as rabbits run away when they see a stoat, whereas the kakapo’s reaction was to freeze. This is particularly ineffective as a defence mechanism against carnivorous mammals.

Sirocco travels extensively as a “spokesbird” for New Zealand conservation. Unfortunately he cannot contribute to the survival of his species as, because he was raised by conservationists after almost dying as a chick, he doesn’t recognise other kakapo as potential mates. Added to that, he is sterile. So his job is to be a showcase for kakapo throughout New Zealand.

As kakapo are nocturnal, the tours to see him also start in the late afternoon and run through the evening. The tour gave us a brief history of kakapo and their conservation (some of which has been regurgitated above) as well as some video footage of conservation efforts from the 1950s onwards. Then we walked the short walk up to the enclosure where he is kept. This consists of a glass area for viewing, which backs onto an enclosed area where he lives and sleeps during the day.

One thing to note: he is BIG. I mean, you think you’ve seen a big parrot when you see one of the sort that sits on Long John Silver’s shoulders, or maybe a large cockatoo; he’s bigger than that – about the size of a large chicken, and adults weigh in between 2 and 4 kg. He's somewhat fuller-figured than his flying chums, as a natural consequence of being flightless. Hey, he's (quite literally) just big-boned.

The Island

It was a warm sunny day, so we decided to take the ferry over to Matiu/Somes island for a picnic and see if we could spot any wildlife there. As a predator-free island, it is home to tuatara, weta and also has a thriving population of kakariki. We climbed up to the gun emplacements at the top of the island and organised our picnic there.

Afterwards we went for a walk around the island tracks, spotting some kakariki, but they didn't land so I was unable to snap them. No sign of any tuatara, and the weta are nocturnal, so I had to make do with seagulls and skinks instead.

The following week, I was back on the island, this time with work colleagues: my employer gives us one day per year to take as volunteer leave, and we had decided to use this to help out the DoC work on the island. There are no permanent staff on the island - they rely entirely on volunteer groups and individuals to get everything done, with one island ranger, Jo, who organises the volunteers. On arrival, we were given two tasks for the morning: transporting a load of gravel from the dock up to the Visitor Centre, where it was to be used for a new building project, and sorting the chopped-down branches from some recent tree clearing into sizes suitable for logs or woodchippings, removing shoots and twigs so that they would go into the machine. It was again a hot day, and by the time lunchtime came round we were ready for a rest and sit in the shade.

After lunch, we had a gentler time of it, clearing overhanging and encroaching foliage from the Western track. As we went along, our DoC organiser pointed out a tuatara on the slopes down from the track. Unfortunately I'd forgotten the ABC rule (Always Bring Camera) so was unable to get a picture of it. As we were clearing the pathway, Jo was also checking the bait boxes for signs of mice and rats, to ensure the island stays pest-free. Inside one box, she found a baby Giant Cook Strait weta - about an inch long. In the next box, there was a fully-grown individual of the same species. These grow to about 2 inches long, and are big, fat creatures. I held this one in my hand, and you can feel the weight of them - an unusual experience when holding an insect! She was carefully replaced in the box.

Whilst we were working, Andy had commented that there were a bunch of people in the water swimming on the far coast - we thought no more of it. But when we came to another gap in the trees, we saw that they weren't people, but dolphins...and a lot of them! There were around 100 dolphins in the pod, swimming into Wellington Harbour.

We finished up our work and waited around for the ferry back to Queen's Wharf. Whilst aboard the ferry, the captain announced that he was going to take a detour into Oriental Bay, because this was where the dolphins now were. Fortunately one of our gang had a proper camera with him and was able to get some decent shots of the dolphins, whilst my cameraphone pictures were a bit rubbish.

photo: Angus Veitch

photo: Angus Veitch

photo: Angus Veitch

photo: Angus Veitch

Pukaha Mount Bruce

On Sunday, we decided to head north of Masterton to the Pukaha Mount Bruce Bird Reserve http://www.pukaha.org.nz/ . We set out early-ish (well, it was Sunday) and arrived there before midday. The reserve aims to reproduce the original forest that used to cover a large swathe of the region, but only now remains in small patches, and is New Zealand’s national centre for breeding and researching rare and endangered species. They have had a fair degree of success in clearing the forest of introduced predators (stoats, weasels, possums, cats and rats) which have been responsible for the rarity/extinction of many native bird species, although they do not have a predator-proof fence, like that found at Zealandia (about which more at a later date).

We followed the bush trail through the forest. Some of the rarer birds are in large aviaries, whilst the more common New Zealand species fly freely through the forest. We spotted some whiteheads, which form noisy groups, and the kokako in one of the aviaries. They have a breeding programme for kokako, and have successfully released birds into the wild in order to establish new populations on predator-free islands.

Kokako

Further on we saw the inevitable tuis and New Zealand pigeons. Also in the river is a population of New Zealand long-finned eels, which are fed daily. The eels grow up to 2m in length.

Long-finned eel

After watching the eel feeding, we went back to the visitor centre and Café Takahe to feed ourselves. The café overlooks the enclosure where the reserve’s two takahe live. This bird was thought to be extinct until they were rediscovered in 1948. Since then, with the help of captive breeding and reintroduction on predator-free islands, the population has recovered to some 200 birds. Two of them live at Pukaha.

Takahe

After lunch, we went along to the final feeding event of the day, the kaka. Kaka are parrots and are related to the South Island Kea. Both species have extremely strong beaks, and the aviary in which the kaka were kept is made of a much stronger wire than the chickenwire used for the other birds – kaka can easily cut through chickenwire with their beaks. Fortunately the population at Pukaha has recovered sufficiently for them to be released into the wild, although they are still fed in part by the rangers. Early in the breeding programme each bird had a radio transmitter and was ringed, allowing the rangers to track them, but in recent years birds have been released into the wild to nest, and not all of them are ringed now. Birds are regularly swapped between populations around the country to ensure genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding.

Kaka

Unfortunately the kiwi house was closed when we visited, as it is being extensively rebuilt, so we were unable to see kiwis. Also, the tuatara was hiding somewhere in its box, so that was another no-show. Still, we’ll visit Zealandia in Wellington sometime soon, and hopefully see some there.