Wild Waitakeres

This past week wrapped up my second at the University of Waikato. It's been a good two weeks, although very overwhelming. I think I'm finally beginning to feel somewhat settled and can remember everyone's name, where the bathroom is, and when "tea time" is each day (yes there is an actual morning tea and afternoon tea that most everyone in the department attends).

On Thursday we got to be part of a field team visiting a beautiful natural preserve in the north called "The Waitakere Ranges" just west of Auckland. It's a beautiful area almost 28,000 hectares in size.  

A view from on top of the dam that lies within the park.

 A shot of us heading into the bush and the big ridge line above us (man, there is some steep country around here). Added bonus of this trip is Brian was invited too, and I captured some quality moments of him...um, hiking?

Looking down south, over the ranges toward the ocean. Brian's elbow is making an appearance on the right.

The drought has made things a touch vulnerable to "burninating"

A Kokako (Callaeas cinereus). This is an NZ bird that CAN actually fly.

Although it is not a "mainland island" in the way of having a fence and complete predator exclusion, they are actively trapping and removing introduced mammal predators and have had great success in bringing back some of the native flora and fauna (both active re-introduction and release through regeneration of what was already there). One of the latest success stories is of the endangered Kokako, which is a cool native bird they've gotten re-established there. This isn't our picture, I stole it from the internet.

Our purpose in visiting was to do plant ecology research and was threefold. My lab currently has two undergraduates doing research and they both needed to visit the Waitakeres for their projects. The third reason was to teach the ignorant new lab member (i.e. yours truly) some of the native flora. One of the undergrads is working on setting up cameras by epiphytes to see what lives in and around them. There are a lot of epiphytes in NZ, especially up north here where it is warm and pretty humid.

A target research tree....no big deal undergrad, just climb it to put the cameras up.....

My labmates talking tree-climbing strategy (using proper equipment).

Scoping out epiphyte species in another tree....

   

A little un-official tree clmbing to eat our lunches. This is my lab manager and someone who recently got their MS in my lab. Did I ever mention that I think New Zealand is the most beautiful place in the world?

We did a lot of tramping around the bush to locate trees/plants and saw some massive giants like this gorgeous Kauri (Agathis australis...remember our kitchen bench from the earlier post?)

Checking out some vegetation around the bridge. I learned there are definitely some things here you shouldn't eat (or lick....touch.....look at for too long!?)

I slipped and dunked my foot on this crossing...mmm, refreshing.....until later on when I had warm wet nasty fungus foot.

I call this "Pensive Brian by Stream"....

...and this "Maniacally Laughing Brian"

The other undergraduate was there to collect plant tissue from an endangered shrub epiphyte to do some genetic systematics work. We couldn't get to this plant (even though we had trained climbers in the group), it was at least 20 meters up and out on a limb. So what do you do when you need a piece of plant from the canopy? You get out "The Big Shot":

We slingshotted rocks at the endangered plant for at least half an hour (permits in hand).

Several people got to be the lucky ones who stood under the tree with hard hats on, waiting to eagerly grasp at any falling plant material (and also eagerly hope to not be hit by falling rocks...).

Brian saved the day by using his man-muscles to hit the plant. Our reward was 3cmx3cm of plant leaf!!

It was a good day overall, with all goals accomplished, and at the end of 13 sweaty hours we were very happy to return to our little home in Hamilton.

On a side note, as I sit here finishing off this post, I just felt an earthquake (4.0 reports say...)! Crazy New Zealand.