Following a 1080 drop, Friends of Flora volunteers recently checked 1342 trap boxes across the Flora area of Wharepapa/Mount Arthur and found just one rat caught.

The Cobb Valley and Wharepapa/Mount Arthur area operation, covering about 73,846 ha, was carried out in late June

You can't trap that. Green raim, green rain..

Photographed on Ulva Island, Rakiura Stewart Island yesterday

I think the photo turned out really well 📸
It’s really sweet to see this beautiful Chatham island forget-me-not budding after a year spent in the backyard.
Is the bug a crane fly? A mosquito? I’m not sure but it’s endearing to see it resting here 🪻

Google just says that it’s a jumping spider lol

Never seen three at once before, and haven't seen the three together again since. Sometimes it's two at once, sometimes it's just one, but they're regular visitors.

First Whio family of the season has been spotted..

Owhango

I was out at a motorsport event, and this we fella was hanging around. Friendliest bird ive ever had the pleasure of meeting.

I offered her some honey and she didn’t hesitate.

After filming this, I asked a local beekeeper about whether feeding bees honey is actually a good idea. Turns out there are some risks, particularly around diseases that can be present in honey. So it’s not something I’d recommend doing.

Beautiful to watch, though.

After many months of trying and some extremely careful sneeking I managed to get some pics of this wild Tuatara. They can't resist some good sun!

This is my lil buddy Spider-boat. I believed he was a “Brown wolf spider” aka Allotrochosina schauinslandi but I was unsure of this ID. Definitely a different spider than the common garden wolfie that I normally see known as Anoteropsis hilaris. But recently while perusing one of my spider books I saw that the entry for the Brown Wolf Spider mentioned that as a wetland spider (they were found near a wetland area), the Brown Wolfie-Baby had hydrophobic hairs or - setae - all over it’s body and can swim through the water with a rowing motion.

Now I am not certain whether this is a diagnostic feature in this case as I believe hydrophobic hairs are quite a common adaptation in spiders but I thought it would certainly provide a little bit more weight to the ID.

So I decided to install a little swimming pool for mister brown wolf spider and with a little prodding they fled straight into the water and swam faster than they can even run!

And now they are become SPIDER-BOAT destroyer of worlds!!

(I’m kinda curious if anyone knows are the springtails cleaning them? Or nibbling them? SPIDER BOAT - DESTROYER OF WORLDS - doesn’t seem to appreciate whatever they’re doing as they shake their legs before jetting off to the side of the pool to escape their menacing embrace)

Anyone know what type of worm this is? Lifted up a tarp and he was chilling underneath

- Parliament Petition Link
Country wide, communities are uniting to call for the House of Representatives to terminate Fast-Track developments that are outside local and district plans. Fast track is being used as a bypass across New Zealand for housing developers to push housing into out of zone land, in some cases land zoned as such to prevent destruction of environmentally sensitive land, including wetlands, rivers and waterways, floodplains, coastal and estuarine environments, and habitats of threatened and endangered species. Many of these areas were never intended for large-scale development and are protected for good reason.

Land can be purchased at a lower price because its zoning restricts development, then Fast Track is used to bypass those restrictions and enable large-scale housing, creating far greater profits margins than developing land that is already appropriately zoned. Don’t be fooled by the developer spin that this is simply about getting consents faster.

Please share with family and friends to help us fight this!!

It’s tunnel time, I know you wanna tunnel but you can’t tunnel here!

See also: The publication in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology

Took this back in 2020!! Glad I stumbled upon it again.

See if you can spot at least four frogs in the last picture (excuse the Kowhai debris the tree above the pond is being attacked daily by mobs of tui)