https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEcI4APsyU
Wow. Do you reckon our skink habitat will ever be like this? We hope they are not Rainbows!!
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
More Pork Nesting
It has been a case of good news and bad news. The good news
is that a Morepork nested and sat on two eggs in the nest box for over 30 days
which is the incubation period. The bad news is that the eggs were infertile so
nothing hatched. Juveniles reach sexual maturity at the end of their first
year, but the male only mates when he is two years old and female when she is
three years old so we are wondering if they are an immature pair. We had two
eggs laid last year but they never sat on them. Those eggs were also infertile.
We are hoping for a successful year this coming season.
The bird would temporarily leave the nest when we visited
the box. She never seemed stressed in
any way so this enabled one of our team, Jeanette Holborow, to take some
excellent photos including a short video picture. Click on this link and it
will take you to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9393rngZEsE&feature=youtu.be
 |
| Looking in the nest box using a built in camera |
Fire in Gully
In early December we had two young people set fire to the
foliage on the east side of the walk bridge. It was fortunate that it was not
as dry then as it is now. The fire engine was called and the fire was put out
before it got a hold in the main part of the gully.
We are having a few problems with this sort of thing lately.
Two lots of graffiti, the rubbish bin has been attacked on several occasions
and one of our volunteer’s bag was taken one Wednesday. If anyone has
information that identifies any of the people involved please contact the
Trust. Contact details are on the heading of this page.
2014 Awards
Mangaiti Gully Restoration Trust was presented with two
awards in December.
The Kowhia Community
Group Ward in recognition of our huge contribution to local environmental
initiatives. This award is sponsored by the Environment Centre Hamilton and Hamilton
City Council and comes with a $400 grant. We would like to thank Gerard Kelly,
HCC Community Planting Co-ordinator, for nominating our Trust and his ongoing
support in our gully work.
The other Award was the Weedbusters
Awards 2014 for weed busting on public land. This award is sponsored
jointly by Department of Conservation and Waikato Regional Council.
Both these awards recognise the effort put in by our
regular volunteers at our Wednesday morning working bees and the success we are
having working towards our Trust’s vision to restore the native flora of the
gully back, as near as possible, to pre-European status and to manage the gully
in such a way that native fauna (birds, fish, bats, reptiles & insects) will
re-establish, either naturally or by introduction and for this to be
sustainable.
Our Trust would like to thank all the sponsors of these
awards and their recognition of our work. A local Tui on You Tube
This video was captured by Kimble Putney outside his window
in the gully just behind Porritt Stadium in Chartwell, Hamilton, NZ. It was a
daily visitor on the flax flower.
Skink habitat sanctuary
This project has been completed with the cat proof hedge of Corokia cotoneaster being planted. This
will take a couple of years to become cat proof but we are satisfied that this
will be an acceptable solution to the cat problem. We have introduced a female
Skink and two young found nearby and are confident that others will soon take
up residence. |
| Corokia cotoneaster |
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