Forest to the sea

On dusk the Tui calls echo through the forest, as daylight diminishes the call of Morepork (Ruru) creates an eery feeling as others answer in the distance, later we hear Kiwi, only one maybe his partner is incubating the egg.

A good number of interested people came to the field day held on our property.

The Council has an environmental subsidy available to all land owners in Northland.

Topics of the day were from trapping predators to fencing off sensitive and significant areas, be it forest or wetlands. We are in our first year of trapping predators, after two years of fencing rivers, wetlands and areas of forest.

Bird life is on the increase espescially the kiwi.

Our Kiwi monitoring has seen the number of calls are up on last year. All in all the field day was succesfull.

Last night we had a special visitor, Luke from The Camper Magazine.

He is writing an article on our night walk. We also had an Australian and three from NZ.

The Morepork or Ruru announced itself with a hunting call, people mistake this call for the Kiwi, it was answered by another with a normal call.

We saw one fly in the light of the spotlight. The Kauri trees look enormous at night towering like skyscrapers disappearing in the dark.

The Kauri tree had its usual cave weta and giant spider living in the cracks of the trunk.

As we walked back the Kauri snail were out feeding on slugs and worms. When we emerged from the forest the moon is in its full glory, we turned off our headlamps and walked back in the moon light.

An awesome night for all.