I have had an amazing 2 ½ weeks on Little Barrier doing the annual reptile survey. It’s fantastic to see the wildlife thriving so well which is credit to the rangers on the island and DOC. There are not many places where you can go out walking at night and get up close to kiwi and giant weta. We managed to capture hundreds of lizards, and see tuatara, saddlebacks, stitchbirds, kokako and whiteheads.
Little Barrier Island (Hauturu)
After spending most of on the DOC boat we arrive at little barrier.
Getting our gear ready to transfer on the little boat to go to shore
Shore skink
Ornate Skink
Marbled Skink
Copper skink
Moko skink
Pacific geckos. This was by far the most common species and we foung several variations in colour and patterns.
Big yellow stripe on the head
We found this one sneeking through the leaflitter
Dark morph
A really interesting stripped pacific morph. The regeneration was really unique aswell
Pale coloured morph
This Pacific gecko was feeding on a cicada
Pacific gecko on the Waipawa
Common geckos
They have a really well run tuatara breeding program. This is supplementary feeding the baby tuatara
Baby tuatara out sunning itself
This is Arnie a large male.
Ruldolf hiding under a wooden shelter
Spike another male shedding his skin
Vicky a very friendly female who always comes out of her shelter to say hi.
One of my favourite animals ever since I was a kid
We found this female giant weta (weta ponga) feeding in the leaflitter
I could not get over how big they were. Its so great that they have a place like little barrier where they thrive happily in the absence of introduced predators
This male and female were copulating
This baby kiwi was on the side of Valley track in the middle of the day. With such warm weather it is taking the kiwis longer to find enough food.
Adult kiwis foraging at night
It rained one night there were kiwis everywhere you looked.
Bunkhouse
Track out to the beach
Reptile team 1: Mark, Dave, Jenny, Peter, Marc, Darren and Karen
Banded kokopu in Hut bay creek
We got out for snorkelling a few times. The visibility was amazing regardless of whether it was rough or not. We saw lots of stingrays moving in and out of the weed.
Mumu chafer beetle
There were many common copper butterflies flying over the coastal grasslands and Muehlenbeckia
This rocky coast made up of large boulders goes right round the island
There was this great view walking back down the Valley track
Nice lookout at the start of the Waipawa track
Old kiwi egg in a burrow on the coast
The cliffs were covered in kelp fies. There were millions of them which would start flying everytime we went past.
There was an amazing gorge walking up Parihakoakoa Stream.
Marc found this bat hiding inside a fallen over hollow punga.
NZ native cucumber (mawhai) a very rare plant was growing on the coast
This plant catches birds
Bellbird
Saddleback
Kokako on the rangers deck
White heads
Female Stitchbird
Kakariki (red crowned parakeet)
I got out a few times in the kayak to catch some snapper for dinner. We got out in the boat for a bit of a look around the island
There was some really exciting news: two chevron skinks were found on the island which haven’t been observed on little barrier for 15+ years.
Some researchers successfully found and radio tagged some NZ storm petrel which are breeding on the island. They were thought to be extinct for 150years(photo Martin Berg)
1 comment:
I very much appreciate you sharing your time there! It is an amazing thing to find a small island on Google Earth and then being able to find someone’s story and photos from that island. Very cool!
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