My wildlife experiences these days are pretty much confined to my backyard and a daily ramble around the village of Greytown, New Zealand.
During my daily walks, it is the birds which attract my attention:
skylarks, (“Hail to thee, blithe spirit”),
goldfinches, (“gaillard he was as a goldfynch in the shawe”),
black birds, (“shouting all day at nothing in leafy dells alone”),
the song thrush, greenfinch, chaffinch, dunnock, california quail, house sparrow, eastern rosella, Australian magpie, starling, yellowhammer –foreigners all. Most of them were introduced in the nineteenth century as bio-agents to control plagues of insects brought about by the wholesale destruction of the bush and the consequential severe disruption of the eco-system. I welcome them all, knowing that in the not too distant future we may be lucky to see any bird at all.
I do see the odd native bird; kotare, the kingfisher, pipiwharauroa, the shining cuckoo and its dupe riro, the greywarbler, kahu, the Australasian harrier, pukekos, tui and kereru, tauhou, the white-eye, korimako, the bellbird, but it is the introduced birds I mostly experience, like all New Zealanders. They are the birds we are intimate with, the ones we find in our backyards.
During the warmer months I might be found under a tree in the back yard from around 4pm with a glass of wine or beer in hand. I am lucky enough to have the traditional quarter acre section with the house set in a small patch of bush, the heritage of which is as mixed as anything in New Zealand. There one may find kauri, totara, rimu, cabbage trees, tarata, kowhai, mahoe, along with liquidambar, flowering gums, bottlebrush, elms and mature rhododendron. A fig tree, a lemon and a lime, should not be forgotten, plum trees and feijoas which, incidentally, are pollinated by blackbirds here in New Zealand.
On Wood Street on the outskirts of town near to apple orchards and farmland, I see rabbits which have survived the latest dose of pindone from Wellington Regional Council. Hares are also occasionally about but I haven’t seen a hedgehog in a long time. They too are on the kill list of the Regional Councils.
I see very little in the way of insects at all, which maybe because they are regularly sprayed with all manner of lethal agricultural chemicals. The bumble bees and honey bees always bring a smile to my face. They too have been introduced here. The cabbage trees show the tell-tales signs of depredation by the larvae of the cabbage tree moth but seldom see a moth stuck to the window panes. The ramarama in the driveway attracts a few native solitary bees of the Leioproctus species.A small pile of soil is the usual sign of their individual nest tunnels. But no shimmering dragonflies nor damselflies even though there are water races nearby. No beetles and few spiders festooning the house with their webs for the goldfinch to seek eagerly for their nests. I haven’t seen a stick insect, huhu beetle or puriri moth in years, but the summer will bring cicadas, black crickets and bush crickets, and emperor gum moths, so not all is not lost.
In contrast to my semi-rural environment, a few years ago I was living on Main Street in Greytown, where the backyard offered far more wildlife than I experience here on Wood Street. Shopkeepers and café proprietors are far too busy to bother about keeping yards tidy so that back yards habitats remain virtually unkempt and untidy, undisturbed for many years. In spite of frequent irruptions of rats and mice, the beetles and spiders, and tree wetas proliferated along with praying mantis, butterflies, admirals and monarch, dragonflies and damselflies, wasps, Asian paper wasps and German wasps. Indeed, in the old derelict shed in the backyard was the remains of an enormous German wasp nest, maybe three or four yards square. However, I never saw a skink or a lizard, probably because there were too many stray cats.
But it was the Tunnel-web spiders, Porrhothele antipodianna which were the star attraction. They were everywhere in great numbers, under every piece of wood and rock, and even managing to find their way inside the building, scaring the living daylights out of me wandering across the carpet towards me while quietly trying to read at night. Related to tarantulas, they are a harmless relative of the venomous Australian funnel-web spider. It is said that they were the inspiration for Peter Jackson’s Shelob in Lord of the Rings.
There in the backyard on Main Street I was sitting under the spreading golden elm one afternoon, content to enjoy, waiting for whatever drama might unfold around me. A movement in the grass caught my attention. A golden hunting wasp of the family Pompilidae, large and alien looking but quite harmless. I couldn’t quite grasp what it was doing for a time but then it became apparent it was dragging something through the grass, a tunnel web spider, paralysed, if not dead. I watched for some time as it dragged the spider maybe 30 yards across the lawn to its lair hidden somewhere in the undergrowth near the back fence. I didn’t enquire too closely.
It was a never to be forgotten experience. The credentials of both participants were impeccable, being endemic to New Zealand
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