tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-103324762024-03-07T00:56:36.489-08:00Greytown county almanacWriting about nature, particularly birdlife, in Greytown, New Zealand. With apologies to Aldo Leopold.
rooks, corvus frugeligusnarenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-45592221311679674792022-05-04T20:38:00.001-07:002022-05-05T03:15:16.394-07:00Bleeding for the Natural World<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzG3iXqAbA2K8fQnhQYK-2AljyZBBkNRu4kkLUcNTSFNAx-NFGD9EP0STopLmn-cL0mzGTNyTMol_qHjcTzHQwDZnMxT8C4idFSLHdPsxCdrwn7LWrffTMkvhurmYxzIzqI5IM1rlixLtOPMRJcaN86uEx8wZKbCmwLYKuPC17tucR0IcilTxhtfGBwPK3/s879/fullsizeoutput_138.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="879" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzG3iXqAbA2K8fQnhQYK-2AljyZBBkNRu4kkLUcNTSFNAx-NFGD9EP0STopLmn-cL0mzGTNyTMol_qHjcTzHQwDZnMxT8C4idFSLHdPsxCdrwn7LWrffTMkvhurmYxzIzqI5IM1rlixLtOPMRJcaN86uEx8wZKbCmwLYKuPC17tucR0IcilTxhtfGBwPK3/s320/fullsizeoutput_138.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Another report: Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, the Implementation Plan. As someone who pays attention, I have about lost track of all the government reports on the environment that have come out of late. There are reports on reports, reports on court cases, but all are basically saying much the same thing - the environment is in ongoing decline, if not collapse. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #445555;">It is not easy to determine how all the reports hang together or what they are expected to achieve. There are more reports on the horizon: Resource Management Act, Conservation and Wildlife Acts, National Parks Act, Trade in Endangered Species Act, to name a few. Nor can we do any of these reforms in isolation from the rest of the world. We must take into account t</span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #4d4d4d;">he UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous People. </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Even for the layperson passionate about the natural world, it is pretty near impossible to keep up with it all. We are dependent upon ministers of the Crown, the Green Party, Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, Ornithological Society of NZ, Local and Regional Councils, not forgetting the media nor the Treaty of Waitangi--to keep us informed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">What have they achieved these last 50 years, the greater part of my adult consciousness? Some legislation and more and more paperwork? </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">I applauded local government when it decided to plant native trees rather than exotics in gardens but was confounded when they decided to exterminate the rook, <i>Corvus frugilegus</i>, something condoned by all of the above, by their simply remaining silent or their being “comfortable” about it. How do these decisions come about? With the help of requisite science one would hope and assume, and some sort of forward planning, some sort of direction from the government of the day, sadly lacking in a lot of decision making.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #445555;">Many of these recent reports have come about because, according to the Parliamentary Commission for the Environment, there are considerable gaps in the data about the environment. ‘How can one give policy direction when one doesn’t know what is going on out there?’ As an example, r</span><span style="color: #2d393a;">egional councils, Department of Conservation, Manaaki Whenua and the Ornithological Society of New Zealand all carry out bird monitoring on public and private land using different methods. Although these different methods are used for a reason, the result is that it is not possible to build a consistent and up-to-date picture of the distribution and abundance of birds across the country. </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #2d393a; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">In my perambulations around my back yard and in walking my dog around this small rural town where I live, I notice that there are few if any snails or slugs in my back yard, no huhu beetles, the bug bear of my childhood and youth, no stick insects, and so few moths attracted to the lights at night. I ask myself whether this is happening elsewhere. I’m no scientist but just how difficult is it to get and compile baseline data? Surely one can get schools to incorporate data collection in their science lessons. Not all schools, but just a number of strategically sited schools around the country collecting data on invertebrates, birds, water quality, etc., with perhaps one person in the Ministry to compile and disperse. How hard is that?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #445555;">All of these people working, making a living, in the sphere of the “environment”, who by their own admission, by their published reports, have accomplished next to nothing in the last 50 years. What do they have to say for themselves? Who is going to hold them to account? </span><span style="color: #445555;">Where are the dissenting voices from this group speak? The smug environmental establishment seems to have insulated itself from <span style="caret-color: rgb(68, 85, 85);">criticism, by condemning those who do attempt to speak out against the prevailing orthodoxy.</span></span></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><br /></p><p class="Textbody" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #445555;">Conserving the environment or exploiting it? </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(68, 85, 85); color: #445555;">Even the revered David Attenborough has been accused of betraying the natural world when for so many years he remained silent about the destruction of the world he purports to love. Was he exploiting the environment as much as any mining company, tourist operator, or farmer? </span><span style="color: #445555;">Are not those variously working in the environmental domain all exploiting the natural world?</span></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #445555;">The prevailing view is that </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0f1419;">indigenous people, Maori, are the real champions of biodiversity and holders of intimate knowledge and solutions to environmental collapse. </span><span style="color: #445555;">Is the Maori way significantly different from the Pakeha? I have enormous respect for Dame Anne Salmond who has written extensively in this area but I am not convinced. Maori and Pakeha both, in my view, exploit natural resources, as a recent court case over commercial concessions and the sad fate of half the Te Urewera Kokako population wiped out by a lack of predator control has revealed. Customary use right has long been a bone of contention. What can I say but that chicken stuffed with miro berries is as good as kereru, or so I am told. I am not opposed to the Conservation Estate being devolved to Maori. There are good reasons why that should happen, but not I hope before Maori’s commercial interests and guardianship roles are clearly defined.</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">So, what to do? I have little faith that Predator Free 2050 will accomplish much. Why Barn owls, which have managed to get to NZ of their own accord, have not been considered as bioagents to control rats and mice confounds me. Fenced mainland islands like Zealandia and offshore islands are the way to go, even though it seems we are confining our wildlife to zoos of a sort. Culling is of course necessary but done by professionals, not a lot of amateurs running around, some of whom use it as an opportunity to eliminate their pet hates. Unless we have a programme to drastically reduce the use of pesticides, as proposed by the UN Convention on Biodiversity, then it will accomplish little. The Hazardous Substances part of the Ministry for the Environment seems to do little but approve every chemical under the sun, and the harm to invertebrates and vertebrates alike are rarely mentioned in all the reports churned out --although some attention is now being paid to plastics.</span></p><p class="Textbody" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555; font-size: 14pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: #445555;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">There is a growing sense among those of us bleeding for the natural world that what is needed is a paradigm shift in the way we live our lives and produce our food. The habit of economic growth persists with it’s extractive and exploitative demands. There are hopeful signs out there but unless we make a concerted effort, then the usual suspects of war, plague and famine will force that paradigm shift upon us.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="Standard" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; margin: 0cm 0cm 5.65pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOuynyOnLKpz2p5vitaAHW8vebwzdmez0tBr7H8lf7arTHtyPxnYCHlM28laRIXbJGfEjgdJrD1r0kuJCbzEgR8Frm5sIUbpwnyhTW4WFdrkMT8oHYR9W32XJPrWeIVCwSwUMHMrsgrIj3DGIve4HWRZlf4b2LwoTPz27Zfj0pNEIxyRT2zr3txjtlcMLR/s1355/barnowl.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1355" data-original-width="901" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOuynyOnLKpz2p5vitaAHW8vebwzdmez0tBr7H8lf7arTHtyPxnYCHlM28laRIXbJGfEjgdJrD1r0kuJCbzEgR8Frm5sIUbpwnyhTW4WFdrkMT8oHYR9W32XJPrWeIVCwSwUMHMrsgrIj3DGIve4HWRZlf4b2LwoTPz27Zfj0pNEIxyRT2zr3txjtlcMLR/s320/barnowl.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(68, 85, 85); color: #445555; font-family: adelle-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.66; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div>narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-85589226519755182942022-04-25T01:55:00.005-07:002022-04-28T18:22:56.544-07:00Ara Moa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="Textbody" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtqFbf3N45L2K-cWlXEXHIlmZPg5lcKDkZ6e5i7mm3ypt6QFfrFJYnI5ZtjgdKNsUlHYagsBFHarPiY_ZmIfRSATvlaFplL7npmJbDmw2dTSQmguEwTYLPT8KBTaCyA3Fn9WWv_Z6n1lvVppXOXlvHSGtOmcKwx-hTmOChQyWeOLeqTCXUz3xTzSvX2-1G/s2048/FFAF3XkVkAMJ8XT.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1593" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtqFbf3N45L2K-cWlXEXHIlmZPg5lcKDkZ6e5i7mm3ypt6QFfrFJYnI5ZtjgdKNsUlHYagsBFHarPiY_ZmIfRSATvlaFplL7npmJbDmw2dTSQmguEwTYLPT8KBTaCyA3Fn9WWv_Z6n1lvVppXOXlvHSGtOmcKwx-hTmOChQyWeOLeqTCXUz3xTzSvX2-1G/s320/FFAF3XkVkAMJ8XT.jpeg" width="249" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><br />Greytown, </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Te Hupenui,</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">is my turangawaewae, the place where I stand, the place where I was born. Wellington and the Wairarapa are where my family settled in the nineteenth century. My ancestors walked the streets of Wellington, Pahiatua, Masterton and the shores of Lake Wairarapa, as I do now.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Scientists report, from the evidence of pollen grains, that before humans arrived here, </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">85-90% of New Zealand, including the Wairarapa, was covered with forest. Grassland or shrubland occurred, as it does now, on river terraces subject to regular flooding, frost-prone valley floors, steep cliffs, and active sand dunes. Outside these limited areas the forest cover was unbroken.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">In this forested country, the moa roamed, its only predator the great <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Haast eagle. Evidence suggests that <span style="color: #231f20;">m</span></span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">oa nested in the dunes around the Wairarapa coast and under high rock ledges. On my sister’s farm, near the </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Mangatainoka </span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">river, when digging out drains, they would regularly recover moa bones, some of which I have now, including the claws of the little bush moa. Researchers estimate that there were probably near a million roaming through the New Zealand bush, hunted to extinction by Maori, the great eagle following its prey into extinction. So many bones left that my pakeha farming ancestors crushed them for fertiliser.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Moa being browsers of the forest trees and shrubs, made tracks through the bush.<span style="color: #231f20;"> </span>After the moa had been hunted to extinction, <span style="color: #231f20;">the bush closed in to become virtually impenetrable, as attested by early European explorers and settlers. Evidence has been put forward suggesting that moa used regular tracks, and that these tracks are still visible in various parts of New Zealand. Tracks at Poukawa, Hawke's Bay, have been illustrated. </span>Maori kept some of the moa ara, the moa tracks, open which in turn were utilised and reformed by Pakeha, so in a sense moa are still with us.</span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">In hunting the moa, Maori used fire as an agent. Fire transformed the landscape. By the time Europeans came, burn off by Māori and natural fires had left large areas of grass, fern, and scrubland in the south and east of the Wairarapa. The Tararua Ranges and the north were still heavily forested. As farming began, most of the lowlands and eastern uplands were cleared of native grasses and re-sown in exotic varieties or given over to horticulture.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Seventy Mile Bush, Tapere-nui-a-Whātonga, stretched from the Wairarapa to Hawke’s Bay. Pukaha Mount Bruce is the last substantial remnant of the great forest. It was a conifer–broadleaf forest where the largest trees were tōtara, rimu, rātā and mataī, growing through an understorey of tawa, hīnau, makomako, kōnini, poroporo, kōwhai and lancewood. From the early 1870s the forest was cleared by government-assisted Scandinavian immigrants (and others), who then settled the land. The bush was cleared in a two-step process. The undergrowth was felled in winter and left to dry. The next winter it was set ablaze, engulfing the whole forest. The smoke could be a kilometre across, billowing up to 6,000 metres high. My ancestors were among “the others” who conspired to fell the bush. My father, who was born in Pahiatua in 1892, said in his old age he could still smell the stumps smouldering. His uncle married a Peterson, one of the Danish immigrants.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">If Maori saw the extinction of the moa, it was left to Pakeha to see out the huia, its ivory like beaks turned into brooches and its body stuffed for overseas museums. The utter obscenity of it all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Extinction is an ongoing thing, and local. How long will Greytown hear pipiwharauroa, the shining cuckoo, or Ruru, the morepork? Kereru are few and could disappear very soon. “</span><span lang="EN" style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">We no longer see them around here,” the cry goes up and very soon they have gone from everywhere.</span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">An Unknown Legacy of an Extinct Bird https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/1860.pdf</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #231f20; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><br /></span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 1.5pt 0cm 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1r7bs-oHp9W4OWIa6PDLB20Vk2gX7hORxfwrDK3tnUxPZI8tCOm1EO-KK8RlVD8-9kS_yGWhnh7NDJGzOUDppXzhvvlcuzOIc4-sPIasL9qF4vfC9dqFzgUaz4QITf8x4K3294_hg4k1csXnoO_23HahZ3jZDX3eDyrvWn4cC3MCqB_KWIhMObCxWe4F/s334/norsewood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="334" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1r7bs-oHp9W4OWIa6PDLB20Vk2gX7hORxfwrDK3tnUxPZI8tCOm1EO-KK8RlVD8-9kS_yGWhnh7NDJGzOUDppXzhvvlcuzOIc4-sPIasL9qF4vfC9dqFzgUaz4QITf8x4K3294_hg4k1csXnoO_23HahZ3jZDX3eDyrvWn4cC3MCqB_KWIhMObCxWe4F/s320/norsewood.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Norsewood 1880s</span><p></p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br clear="all" style="break-before: page;" /></span><span face="-webkit-standard"></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-27162479602431645852019-05-06T18:52:00.008-07:002022-04-28T22:01:30.314-07:00Credo<p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFVLykSjrqsAlBlJK_1HrnxucvPyTNtsFL_7VQ3PE78xCJfZq7TQbKLQbcVKkZDZevIvtsvkIV9Ubkgmk8YOa9PKTYzNSngSzg52CfRBuGtRF_qSkXMFo_KtHnHdnxoTC1gI4QDS4VOg/s246/diva_dragon_fly2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFVLykSjrqsAlBlJK_1HrnxucvPyTNtsFL_7VQ3PE78xCJfZq7TQbKLQbcVKkZDZevIvtsvkIV9Ubkgmk8YOa9PKTYzNSngSzg52CfRBuGtRF_qSkXMFo_KtHnHdnxoTC1gI4QDS4VOg/" /></a></div>High summer and everything is intent upon breeding and increasing their numbers. Bugs everywhere! The "summer" flies are intent upon taking the food before it reaches my mouth. The Mason wasps, mud daubers, are loudly building their nests, not only under chairs but also in the folds of the drapes, while spiders threaten to totally envelop the cottage with their webs.<p></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">In the evening, if I dare to leave the windows open, I am bombarded by moths and click beetles and bugged by Huhu beetles. Raucous cicadas rudely awaken me in the morning while white butterfly caterpillars chomp their way through the cabbages.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">But then there are the gorgeous and the exotic creatures which stop me in my tracks and dissipate any hostility towards the pestiferous. They send me off to the books to try and make an identification.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Gorgeous steely blue lady birds which I can always find in the lime tree. A tiny native bee in the hay paddocks which I have yet to identify and a strange creature I always find on the Corokia shrubs. Green and yellow with a touch of white and with two "horns", at first glance it looks like a beetle but when disturbed it reveals itself to be a spider. I'm still working on finding out just who it is.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">The wisteria vine is utterly infested with another strange creature which I have actually managed to identify as the larvae of an Australian green plant hopper. They bear a tuft of whitish hairs at the end of their bodies and jump a considerable distance when disturbed.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Why this desire, this compunction, a friend has asked, to name things, to identify them?</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">To show respect, is my response.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">How many species are there in the world today? Most estimates fall between ten and 100 million. It is indeed remarkable that we in this modern world obsessed with measuring things, do not know to within an order of magnitude how many species we share the globe with, says Richard Leakey in his book The Sixth Extinction.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">We have a good estimate of how many stars are in our galaxy. We know how many nucleotide bases constitute the human genetic blueprint and we can calculate to within a few hours when a comet will collide with Jupiter yet we cannot put a secure number on current species diversity. It is not through lack of knowing but through a lack of commitment. Governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the systematic study of stars but only a tiny fraction of that sum on the systematic study of nature here on Earth.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Of the estimates of ten to 100 million species that may exist on this planet only about 1.4 million have been recorded and identified. Even here in New Zealand the vast majority of species are unnamed and unknown. However, if we did make the commitment to “aim at nothing less than a full count, a complete catalogue of life on earth”, as Edward O Wilson urges, we would fail, as species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. It is estimated that half the species will become extinct by the middle this century.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">However, there have been at least five occasions in the very long history of the planet when nearly two thirds of its living creatures disappeared from the face of the earth. The end-Permian extinction, 225 million years ago, extirpated more than 95 per cent of marine animal species and almost as many on land. Virtually all scientists who are studying biological diversity agree that we are now in the midst of the sixth great crisis, this time precipitated entirely by man, Homo sapiens.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">The sad fact of our history is that no matter where we have gone, destruction and extinction of species has followed. This is not just a matter of our recent history. When primitive man crossed the Bering Straits into North America, destruction of all the great herbivores in both North and South America followed. The movement of the human species into the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand was also followed by mass extinction of species, in our case the great flightless birds among others. European expansion in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries merely accelerated the process.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">With the continuing destruction of habitat in the face of industrial and agricultural expansion, both of which are aspects of continued population growth, the process of species extinction in the twentieth century has accelerated even more, to the point where our own future may well be threatened.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;">We have a moral duty to know as much as can be known about, "the endless forms most beautiful", as Darwin has said, with which we share this earth. It has become my credo, for once identified, once known and named, one cannot easily deny a creature's existence, cannot so easily destroy them.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15.84375px 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;"><strong>Narena Olliver</strong>, 1998. <br /><br />References: <strong><em>The Diversity of Life</em></strong>, E.O.Wilson; <br /><strong><em>The Sixth Extinction</em></strong>, Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, 1995. </span></p>narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-78441229800912525962019-03-06T18:02:00.001-08:002019-03-06T18:02:38.349-08:00The Turnstone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">There is this bird, beautifully patterned,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">a small bird, smaller than a thrush or blackbird<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">and then flies here to New Zealand every spring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">and here am I, just<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">turning over stones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-6379241738538855062019-01-23T19:46:00.002-08:002022-04-24T16:50:00.606-07:00The Precipitous Decline of the Birds of the New Zealand Countryside<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">With all the hullabaloo about the impact of intensive farming on waterways, the impact on birds has been overlooked. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Millions of birds have been lost from New Zealand countryside over the past thirty odd years. Most of them were introduced birds so have not been missed but surely someone should have recognised that their loss indicated something had gone very wrong with farmland ecosystems. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">We have a survey on New Zealand’s backyard birds, initiated by Landcare Research, but no up to date information on the birds of the countryside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">The only comprehensive data we have is from the Ornithological Society of New Zealand’s <i>Atlas of Bird Distribution in New Zealand 1999-2004</i>which was published 2007. It was noted at its launch that <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">the Waikato region had become a "bird desert" probably because of the dominance of dairy farming in the region. </span>Birds have not, it seems, fared quite so badly on the less intensive meat and wool farms, <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">but very little, if any, follow up research was initiated. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">So all one can do at this stage is to draw upon anecdotal observations of birders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Not all declines of birds can of course be ascribed to intensive farming. There are not as many Australasian harriers around as there used to be when there was a lot of possum road kill around. Spur-winged plover are also in decline, but they are now on the kill list even though they are classified as native. Rooks have been exterminated and for no good reason at all. The great flocks of finches have also gone. Somewhere during the 1990s the small hay bales were replaced by plastic covered ensilage which deprived the finches, mostly yellowhammers, of the seed, their winter fare. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">However, it is the decline of insects which has had the greatest impact on birds. There is no monitoring of insects in New Zealand to my knowledge. However, the front car window, acting as an informal splatter test for insects, has revealed their precipitous decline, along with insect eating birds, over the last thirty years, in line with what is happening on the rest if the planet. The widespread use of pesticides is undoubtedly to blame.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">The great flocks of starlings, the spectacular murmurations have gone. Farmers, until the 1990s, used to put out nesting boxes for them, because of the sterling work they did in controlling pastural insect pests such as porina and grass grub. Their relatives, that unloved bird imported from Asia, the mynah, has also declined. Remember how they used to play chicken with cars on the roads looking for insects. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Farm runoff, the excessive application of artificial nitrogen, has been deemed responsible for the decline of our waterways, and the life in and around them. During the winter and early spring, it is usual to see the pairs of paradise duck spread out through the paddocks, but even they have declined. A puzzle at first as they are grass eating ducks, until it occurs that their ducklings need aquatic insects in order to thrive. White-faced heron, kingfisher, pied stilt, fantails and bittern, birds which one would normally, or used to see, around waterways or swampy farm land, have all but disappeared. Even the pukeko’s distribution has become patchy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">But it is the story of the bittern which is particularly tragic. The green bell frog, another import, this one from Australia, virtually disappeared in 1990s. Its disappearance was blamed on farming as it could be found still in areas where farm runoff could not be implicated. The causes are still a bit of a mystery, although ivermectine pour on drenches and atrazine have been suspects. The bittern which until the 1990s was widely distributed on farm land, feeding on the frogs which proliferated in drains. They are now on the endangered list. Bird rescue reports indicate the bittern was simply being starved out of existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Farm drains and effluent ponds used to be a major breeding ground for mallard ducks and their hybrids. The reasons for their decline in the North Island is uncertain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">The most distressing story is about the conversion of the 150,000 hectare Kaingaroa Forest into dairy farms by Landcorp, now ironically called Pamu. These conversions touted as being environmentally friendly, saw the loss of millions of birds, including high numbers of kiwi who it was reported preferred pine forest because it harboured fewer predators. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">The forest boasted the highest densities of birds recorded on the New Zealand mainland, with 1203 pairs per 100 ha, 652 of which were native. <a href="https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/pine-forest-natives/">Birds of the Kaingaroa Forest</a> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Driving through the area last spring I counted just 3 birds, magpies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Did anyone report and lament the losses. Forest & Bird? Agricultural scientists? Policy makers, farm leaders and the government of the day surely knew what was happening and did nothing. The 2017 report, Saving New Zealand’s Birds, from Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment had next to nothing to say about farm birds. </span><br />
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-33949956592196820342019-01-17T14:38:00.000-08:002019-01-17T14:38:18.628-08:00Tunnel-web spiders and golden hunting wasps<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">My wildlife experiences these days are pretty much confined to my backyard and a daily ramble around the village of Greytown, New Zealand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">During my daily walks, it is the birds which attract my attention: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">skylarks, (“Hail to thee, blithe spirit”),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">goldfinches, (“gaillard he was as a goldfynch in the shawe”), <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">black birds, (“shouting all day at nothing in leafy dells alone”),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">A small pile of soil is the usual sign of their individual nest tunnels</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">. 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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">But it was the Tunnel-web spiders, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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 </span><span style="color: #6a6a6a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">tarantulas</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">, 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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">It was a never to be forgotten experience. The credentials of both participants were impeccable, being endemic to New Zealand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-11251170992128369332018-12-27T12:13:00.002-08:002018-12-30T17:20:18.411-08:00Of Aphis and Ants, the end of the anthropocene <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta had been awoken as usual by their antennae softly stroking her on the inner wrist. They seemed to wait until they were sure she was awake before crawling up her arm. They stroked her arm again just inside the elbow. She suspected they were administering a local anaesthetic. She waited with the usual sense of dread for the tiny pin pricks as they probed. There were always just three of them. Were they the same three ants every day? She couldn't tell. They were on the large size for ants, but ants they were, although their proboscides was more mosquito like than that of any ant. It was over in a few minutes. They waddled off with the bags inside their legs full of her blood. They disappeared under the door. There was no keeping them out. They could fire off acid to dissolve any lock, any door, and leave humans a pulpy heap if they resisted or tried to fight back.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">They always made Marta think of the ants on the rose bushes she observed as a child, herding and milking aphids. Such a benign fascinating scene, so unlike the horror she was now experiencing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta looked down from her office to the streets below. Washington was in ruins, the city crumbling. Nature had seriously begun to take over. It also looked incredibly clean, no longer grimy with rubbish everywhere. There were few people to be seen in the streets and only the odd car being driven about, where once, not so long ago, she could look down and see the streets teaming with people and cars. Ironically, from that height the traffic, people and cars, had looked like ants streaming from their <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">nests. It made her smile. Once the great apex predators, now just prey to ants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">The ants had become well established before anyone had any inkling that something was amiss. Marta and her staff in the Environment Protection Agency blamed themselves for missing the event. Media reports had come in of small towns being invaded by ants, but they had largely been ignored. It was just another one day news wonder. They had seen it all before, “killer bees”, birds falling out of the sky, and the like. Pest control people had been called in and pesticide bombs used but the ants seem unaffected. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">It was hard to pin point just when panic set in. When the reports came out that they were taking blood from people? But blood sucking insects were common enough. When any resistance or effort to fight back was countered by a blast of some sort of acid to the eyes? But there were crazy ants and fire ants and ants that fired off formic acid to its enemies or competitors. It was probably when stories came out that the ants could administer a lethal blast, that they had taken over towns and that people were in their control, acting like zombies. It was only then that Marta sent out scientists to see just what was going on. The bigger cities were not initially affected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta was alone in the many storied building housing the EPA. It was where she was living these last years, sleeping on the day bed she had always kept in her office, since Des had taken their two children to join some religious sect out west in the <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">mountains, as so many had done in the early days of the invasion, believing the end days had come, the apocalypse. She believed they were dead, probably committing suicide along with so many others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta showered and dressed. Water was still connected but not for much longer she thought. The central heating had long failed but luckily the climate had warmed enough for it not to be an issue, and the building was mostly glass which allowed the sun in to do its job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta had some breakfast in the old staff cafeteria. In the early days she had lived out of the staff canteen until all the stores ran out. Now urban farmers kept her in supplies in exchange for space on the roof. It was safe from pillaging as she kept the entrance locked. However, they had informed Marta they were thinking of leaving as they had few customers now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">It had taken Marta and her colleagues awhile to work out that the ants didn't want to kill them. They just wanted to farm them. They seemed to want their lives to go on as usual, or more likely they were just indifferent to what humans wanted to do, just so long as their own objectives were not compromised, whatever they might be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">When the ants reached the suburbs of the major towns and it became clear it was a world-wide phenomenon, then the crazies seemed to take over. Rumours spread of <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">alien invasion, Armageddon and the end times. Accusations were made about genetic engineering gone horribly wrong. The usual expected stuff. Demands were made to turn nukes on the ants, nuke them out of existence. The politicians had no idea what to do. They hid themselves in bunkers which the ants inevitably breached. The think tanks kept talking and the ants kept moving. Things began to fall apart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">It was Marta's job to get the policy makers good scientific information. The scientists were out there doing their job as usual. Marta made it a priority to keep contacts alive, computer networks going. The internet, originally designed for a nuclear catastrophe, served its purpose for this catastrophe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">One scientist in particular, Eddie Wilson, a world renowned expert on ants, had been out in the field very early, taking notes. He had arrived at one of the small towns where the invading ants had made their nest in the basement of one of the town's larger houses. He just stayed in or near his truck for days and observed their behaviour. When the ants found him and came looking for blood, he didn't panic. He had observed that if there was resistance, the ants would administer a sub lethal dose of the acid they could fire off, which seemed to calm the victim, or immobilise them. If there was an attack on the ants or just violent resistance the ants would fire off a lethal dose and then just smother the victim in ants until all had been carried away and just the bones remained. It was scary and no surprise that people looked dazed and zombie like, unable to quite cope with the reality of it all. Nor were children, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta asked Edward if he could capture some of the ants so that they might be studied in the lab but he demurred saying that it was impossible. He had seen the ants dissolve a robot which had been sent in to deal with them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">However, his first reports back to Marta indicated that the ants were only interested in farming humans, not in killing them all off. Farming ants were not unknown, and even ants that liked blood. His opinion that this was a mutation that had gone unnoticed. Given all the chemicals that had been poured into the environment, no one should be surprised. He thought that if humans acquiesced, they would come to no real harm and it would allow time to study them further and perhaps get a hold on the situation. He had watched colonies which had been firebombed, pesticide bombed, which they just shrugged off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Edward also maintained that humans would have to survive without meat as he had gone to an abattoir and seen it put out of action by the ants. It was just impossible to slaughter an animal without it being completely taken over by the ants. So farming had better be directed towards growing beans for human consumption. However, they had to get iron into children as without meat and the daily take of blood many would not survive and the human population would crash.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta took his report and other information which backed up his observations to the White House. The president, from his bunker under the White House, made a public appeal for calm, telling the public to acquiesce and get on with their jobs, whether it was retailing, shipping, or rubbish collection. Emphasis was put on hairdressers, beauticians and cafes in order to encourage social cohesion. Everything was done to keep important infrastructure in place, food production, power, water. The military was diverted into maintaining any gaps in essential services. But as people died, as the population decreased, it became harder and harder to maintain services. People adapted as best they could. The picture was pretty much the same all over the world where ants had spread simply by the available transport means.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta kept at her station, reporting to the White House, until she realised that no one was there. There was a story circulating that the President and his advisors had simply given in and opened the doors to the ants. Marta had thought it more likely they had found an escape hole somewhere, possibly some remote island which had escaped the ants.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Marta was now on her own. Edward, her scientist, had filed what he said was his last report. They were both now old, their lives consumed by the crisis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">“My report says it all. As far as I am concerned there is nothing more to say. For a long time we knew our population was out of control. Something had to happen. We <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">were expecting a catastrophe but were looking in the wrong direction. Nature is full of surprises. We were expecting a virus, not an ant.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">We had been the apex predator for so long, we didn't expect to be the prey. But there it is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">“I've been roaming the country for a long time now, watching events. The human population has crashed. Not enough children have been surviving to breed. It is tough. But there is hope, as always. As the small towns die out of humans, the ants also die out, and they return to a more benign form. Vast swathes of the land now are free of humans. No prey for the ants. It is as simple as that. They are reverting to type. It is only when a mammalian population increases, humans, herds of cattle, antelope, that the ants start building up again in numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">“Human survivors are moving out into the countryside in small numbers, small bands. It is tough going but better than where you are. Many predators of all sorts to contend with. They even manage to get a little meat for their children before the ants turn up again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">“I'm going to join them. I'm retiring to the country so to speak. Come with us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">The Anthroprocene was over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-53181639208986272302018-11-23T17:09:00.001-08:002018-12-01T12:40:31.026-08:00Eastern Rosella<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I usually see eastern rosellas, <em>Platycercus eximius, </em>on the outskirts of town, in rapid flight so that one does not easily catch sight of their georgous yellow, blue, green, and red plumage.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The call of the eastern rosella, a sharp piercing three syllable whistle on an ascending scale, I find quite disconcerting. Somehow, that a parakeet should whistle seems incongruous to me. They also exhibit metallic and piping notes at rest and soft chattering or babbling while feeding.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The eastern rosella, according to the ornithologist WRB Oliver, was imported to New Zealand in 1910 when a small shipment that had been refused entry by the Customs Department was released off Otago Heads from the ship that brought them. Other populations became established around Auckland in the 1920s and Wellington in the 1960s and are now the most common and widespread parakeet throughout the North Island. These flocks are also assumed to have originated from escaped caged birds but until some research is done, some DNA analysis, we have no way of knowing whether or not these birds, or at least some of them, have not found their own way here from Australia. Birds do keeping across the Tasman, caught up by the prevailing westerly winds and if they get here under their own steam they are deemed to be native birds and therefore protected.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The most compelling question regarding the eastern rosella, especially in light of arguments regarding the status of introduced birds and whether or not they should be exterminated, is whether these birds are simply filling a niche which our endemic kakariki have vacated or whether they have accelerated the kakariki's decline. Virtually no research, either here or in Australia, has been done on the eastern rosella so we really know very little about them other than anecdotal observations from birders. It would appear that land clearance, and supply of preferred foods such as grass seeds and fruit have greatly benefited the spread of eastern rosella in New Zealand, whereas the kakariki is more comfortable in the bush.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Both kakariki and eastern rosella are cavity nesters but the eastern rosella somehow eludes the predations of <em>Rattus rattus,</em> the tree climbing rat. However, the eastern rosella nests earlier than our own native species which may have them in competition for nesting sites. Oliver and other early observers seem to think that the decline of kakariki coincided with irruptions of rats. The red-crowned kakariki is reported to feed its young on the ground for a time before they can fly which must make the young birds particularly vulnerable and a reason why they, as opposed to the yellow-crowned, have disappeared from the mainland. Both the eastern rosella and kakariki have similar diets.<br />
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Here in Greytown where there are many old commercial apple and pear orchards with fruit left to rot over the winter, eastern rosellas are found in large numbers and are not persecuted. It would be hard to argue they are a threat to any bird here. <span style="font-family: "doc" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><br />
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-36176195178854845312018-11-17T19:50:00.001-08:002018-11-22T12:37:22.818-08:00Turkeys and the domestic contract between animals and farmers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">I suppose one should be forgiven for thinking about turkeys at Thanksgiving or Christmas but I wonder how many realise how much the wild turkey is part of our rural landscape, so much so that Americans now come out here to the Bay of Plenty to hunt them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">When I first came to the Bay of Plenty, I was much taken by the mobs of wild turkeys wandering about the district. I was especially interested in those wandering about my neighbours’ farms but soon learned that the turkeys were not so wild that my neighbour’s did not have a propriety interest in them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Turkeys were introduced to New Zealand around the 1890s. In those days, until around the 1950s, most farms raised a few pigs and had a mob of turkeys along with “chooks” and ducks to give a greater self-sufficiency than is apparent on most farms today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">The turkeys were half domesticated and half wild in that the mobs were allowed to roam free but were occasionally fed maize. The chore of rounding up the mob to feed them usually fell to the younger members of the family. In this way the turkeys were prevented from wandering too far and prevented a range war with neighbours who could not resist shooting turkeys that strayed over the boundary. “Shooting each other’s turkeys” has become enshrined in the local patois and now means simply fighting with one’s neighbours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">As well as adding some variety to the diet, the birds served a useful service on the farm as biological control agents, moving across the pasture cleaning up crickets and other insect pests. They were usually culled in the autumn after they had stopped eating crickets which tainted the meat. With the advent of a different type of farming, the mobs were neglected and left to run wild, that is, until people like me came along with a somewhat different outlook.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">The first summer after I arrived, a neighbour, knowing I wanted some turkeys, finally got around to delivering me a sack containing a hen and three or four chicks that had been demolishing her garden. There began a memorable relationship that taught me some real lessons about their behaviour and, more significantly, something about the domestic contract between farmers and animals, a much neglected environmental issue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">The next spring, nature took its course, a gobbler turned up and from small beginnings I soon managed to acquire a mob numbering up to a hundred simply by feeding them maize every day and generally looking out for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">I learned a lot about the behaviour of turkeys and came to discount some popular misconceptions about them. People would tell me how stupid they were in that they would drag their chicks through the long wet grass so that they died. It is true that the early broods did tend to have a poor survival rate because of wet weather but the turkeys considered the harrier hawk a greater threat to the chicks’ survival which necessitated hiding them in long grass. However, when the dry weather arrived the survival rate was very high. Indeed they exhibited real intelligence in that the hens very often banded together in pairs to fight off the harriers. I often observed them bravely flying up to attack the hated birds who spent much of the spring patrolling the area looking for nests for nothing was more delectable to them than turkey embryos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">I had not quite appreciated that turkeys do fly and there is no more magnificent sight than to see full grown turkeys fly as a mob off the hills of an evening coming into to be fed, or to see them marching across the paddocks hunting for crickets and other insects. However, I was not so impressed when they stripped my grape vine every year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Then there was the drama of the gobblers parading during the mating season, the incredible red and purple mask teaching me what totem means. And the comedy of them stomping on the roof of a morning if I was at all late in getting up to feed them, or wandering inside to parade before a mirror. One can only fully appreciated what “a proper turkey” means from watching a turkey running, head leaning forwards and legs flying out to the side.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">I grew to admire these birds and came to think, like Benjamin Franklin, that the turkey deserved to be America’s national bird rather than the bald eagle. Somehow kiwis and turkeys go better together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">But then the culling had to be done, especially as my reluctance to deal with it had the numbers grow to somewhat ridiculous proportions. Luckily I had many friends and acquaintances who had come to appreciate “wild” turkeys fed on maize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">One should be spared the gory details of the slaughter, which involved machetes and axes, blood and guts and feathers everywhere, utter bedlam.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">The next morning there they would be, the survivors, waiting to be fed again, albeit a bit wary and ready to take off. Still thoroughly traumatised I would return to the kitchen and sit over a pot of tea, no doubt looking more than a little demented, pondering deep metaphysical issues and mumbling, “Why don’t they revolt? Why do they just lie down and take it? Why don’t they rise up and turn on me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Finally, I said enough. I stopped feeding them and let them run wild again. After a couple of years, being hunted by man and hawk, they barely managed to maintain their numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Some animals do I think make a contract with us, choosing to be fed and housed and cared for rather than face the crueller hand of nature in limiting their numbers. Modern factory farmers have moved away from that contract and no doubt think such notions entirely balmy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-18038184208827599662018-11-16T13:16:00.001-08:002018-11-16T13:16:43.785-08:00Elegy for an old ewe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Elegy</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Out of the morning light she appeared, suddenly there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">On the side of the road, white and clean shorn, she looked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Me straight in the eye, and for a chill moment, unhinged me,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">She scared the living daylights out of me, as I drove by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Just an old ewe, chewing her cud, yellow eyes bold and glassy, defiant,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Head held high, strutting her stuff, there on the side of the road.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Cheeky bitch”, I could hear some farmer, this farmer, say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Before setting the dogs on her, and for nothing more, for no good reason<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Other than for escaping from a paddock bare of grass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">“It had been a hard winter!” but it was always a hard winter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">For an old ewe wanting to make milk to feed her lambs,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Twins I knew, tucked carefully away somewhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Behind a bush out of a bitter cold spring wind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">In that paddock bare of grass, of dead and dying lambs and ewes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Farming here in this green New Zealand land is just a matter of controlled starvation.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">What can one say about an old ewe, fit for dog tucker.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">That she had seen it all, worried by dogs, struck by fly,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">nicked in the eye by shearers for kicking back, buggered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">and brutalised by farmers, those bush philosophers “Ah well,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">she could have lost a tit or been fed alive to the pigs!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">What can one say about this old ewe, defiant still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">That she would escape the butchers, the culling knife<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">rear her lambs once again, and then leave the flock,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">go bush, get through the fence and head for that ridge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">that leads deep into that wild and lovely place, Te Urewera,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">and there lie down under some noble tree, totara or rimu<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 14pt;">and gaze into that far distant place, and quietly leave it all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-23971133318133067032018-11-12T00:25:00.004-08:002019-02-10T14:25:06.096-08:00A Murder of Rooks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">From Southland to Northland, Regional Councils around the country are once again putting out the call for sightings of rooks, Corvis frugilegus, in their efforts to exterminate them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The rook is a minor agricultural pest, on a par with the yellowhammer, so how did this bird become a target for extermination rather than control? How did this bird become an unwanted organism under the Biosecurity Act?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The rook is a black, hoarse–voiced bird about the size of a magpie which was brought to New Zealand from Britain between 1862 and 1874 to help control agricultural pests. Unlike many other European birds introduced at the same time, rooks spread very slowly at first. Even as late as 1970, they were largely confined to parts of the Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, southern Wairarapa and Canterbury.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">In the 1971 rooks were declared an agricultural pest in the Hawke’s Bay, largely because of the damage done to emerging crops. Something like 35,000 thousand were shot, probably about half the population. Control methods were affective as by the mid 1980s estimates of rook damage went to almost nothing, as indicated by complaints received by the DSIR and Pest Destruction Boards. Several authors noted that control measures resulted in the spread of rooks to other parts of the country. The recent campaign has further extended their dispersal from Northland to Southland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Regional Council web sites make various claims about the destructive behavior of rooks, some of which belong to the realms of fantasy. The claims range from pecking out the eyes of sheep to the widespread destruction of crops and pasture, in spite of also admitting that 75% of the rooks diet is insects. A pest destruction officer from the Bay of Plenty sent me an image of pasture uprooted and destroyed by rooks. From my experience, it was clearly pasture destroyed by grass grub which some bird, probably starlings, or maybe rooks, had uplifted, the very birds imported into the country to control grass grub. Regional Councils also claim that the rook impacts on native bird populations, a claim which is frankly ludicrous. The more realistic claim that rooks are a problem with emerging crops has been largely nullified as farmers now use seed coatings which repels birds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">So, what is going on?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The process by which an organism is declared unwanted and subject to eradication in New Zealand is obscure to say the least. It certainly appears to want to baffle the lay person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The Biosecurity Act guides pest management in New Zealand. Its main purposes are to prevent new pests from entering the country and to manage pests that are already established here. Regional councils are primarily responsible for the latter. The Act enables Regional Councils to develop a pest management approach that is specific to the region’s needs and communities’ expectations. One of requirements of the Act is that pest control must be cost effective, so the yellowhammer, mustelids and rats, are too numerous and widespread to eradicate but the rook is apparently a viable target because of its limited numbers. However, with the plans to eradicate all pests under Predator Free 2050, this may change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The public are allowed to make submissions on regional pest management plans but although many people have made submissions in support of the rook over the last twenty or so years, the submissions have been ignored. Farmers, such as Olrigg Station, wanting to protect the rook because of their appetite for grass grub, have been threatened with prosecution and worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Where is the science in all of this? The experts on birds, the NZ Ornithological Society, are silent on the matter, possibly because it values its scientific objectivity too much to get involved in “politics”. However, I have perused their literature and there is nothing there to justify the extermination of rooks. </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Forest & Bird say they are "comfortable" with the Regional Council exterminating rooks. </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Horizon Regional Council, who seem to be the main protagonists in this campaign against the rooks, has involved Landcare Research but largely to determine whether extermination is a viable option and to determine the environmental fate and humaneness of DRC-1339, the toxin most commonly used for control of rooks at rookeries. DRC-1339 is an organochlorine, among the worst pesticides around.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The project to exterminate the rook has cost a considerable amount of money, a windfall to the pest destruction industry whose relationship with regional councils needs a closer examination. In perusing the voluminous amount of data on pest strategies on line, I have managed to glean that over a period of twenty years 2002-2022 at a cost of $60,000 a year the Wellington Regional Council proposes to eradicate the rook. Extrapolating this over the other regional councils, the cost has been astronomical, many millions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Now in looking at all this, the logic somehow escapes me. Is this the plan of some fanatic with a hatred of big black birds? Is it part of a fiendish plot to eventually eliminate all introduced birds? Is it an experiment to see if it is possible to exterminate a pest species? I think the public has a right to know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">New Zealand's avifauna, native and introduced, is far from numerous. European birds have now been here for about 150 years. Following the Darwinian scenario of the finches on the Galapagos Islands, a very small number of birds, carrying just a portion of the species genetic potential, will over time change and radiate to fill the ecological niches which are on offer. Isolated from their parent birds, European introduced birds, will in time become truly our own and probably quite different from their European counterparts, unlike Australian introduced birds whose genetics may be boosted by birds continuing to come across the Tasman. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Postscript: After a Twitter exchange with Greater Wellington Regional Council @greaterwgtn over whether or not they had a scientific report to support their campaign for exterminating the rook, they passed me along to the Ministry of Primary Industries @MPI_NZ who revealed that there was either no such report or it had been lost. They were categorised as a Small Scale Management Programme at the request of Regional Councils. I am now in the process of refering all this to the Ombudsman.</span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-24956644788091214612018-11-10T16:53:00.000-08:002018-11-10T16:53:04.313-08:00Life after death - William Donald (Bill) Hamilton, 1936-2000. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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“I will leave a sum in my last will for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure against the possums and the vultures just as we make our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor sordid fly, I will buzz in the dusk like a huge bumble bee. I will be many, buzz even as a swarm of motorbikes, be borne, body by flying body out into the Brazilian wilderness beneath the stars, lofted under those beautiful and un–fused elytra which we will all hold over our backs. So finally I too will shine like a violet ground beetle under a stone.”<br />
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In Memory of Bill Hamilton</h1>
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Obituary: William Donald Hamilton (1936-2000) (Nature 404: 828, 2000).</h2>
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Robert Trivers</div>
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W. D. Hamilton was one of the greatest evolutionary theorists since Darwin. Certainly, where social theory based on natural selection is concerned, he was easily our deepest and most original thinker.</div>
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His first work (1964) - his theory of inclusive fitness - was his most important, because it is the only true advance since Darwin in our understanding of natural selection. Hamilton's work is a natural and inevitable extension of Darwinian logic. In Darwin's system, natural selection refers to individual differences in reproductive success (RS) in nature, where RS is the number of surviving offspring produced. Hamilton enlarged the concept to include RS effects on other relatives; that is, not just fitness or reproductive success but inclusive fitness, defined (roughly) as an individual's RS plus effects on the RS of relatives, each devalued by the appropriate degree of relatedness (r).</div>
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This idea had been briefly advanced by R. A. Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane, but neither took it seriously and neither provided any kind of mathematical foundation. That foundation was not as obvious as it sounds. For a rare altruistic gene, it is clear that Br>C will give positive selection, where B is the benefit conferred and C the cost suffered; but the matter is not so obvious at intermediate gene frequencies. As the altruistic gene spreads, should not the criterion for positive selection be relaxed?</div>
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Hamilton showed that the answer is 'no' and that his simple rule worked for all gene frequencies. He once told the story of sitting down as a doctoral student to write to Haldane, but to formulate each question precisely he had to do additional work and after a couple of years of such work he never sent the letter because by then he had worked out all the answers himself. A noteworthy implication of Hamilton's work was that in almost all species the individual was no longer expected to have a unitary self-interest, because genetic elements are inherited according to different rules (contrast paternal transmission of the Y chromosome with maternal transmission of mitochondrial DNA).</div>
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He soon followed this work with major advances in understanding selection acting on the sex ratio, the moulding of senescence by natural selection, the aggregation and dispersal of organisms, the evolution of the social insects, the evolution of dimorphic males, and the origin of higher taxonomic units in insects. For the latter he argued that the more-or-less closed spaces created by rotting wood imposed a system of small, inbred subpopulations in insects inhabiting it, leading to a great diversity of homozygous forms, often with arbitrary, novel characters (such as a second complete metamorphosis in many male scale insects). In 1981 with Robert Axelrod he laid the mathematical foundation for the study of reciprocal altruism, when they showed that the simple rule of tit-for-tat in playing iterated games of Prisoner's Dilemma was itself evolutionarily stable.</div>
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Twenty years ago Hamilton began to devote most of his time to the theory that parasites play a key role in generating sexual reproduction in their hosts, recombination being a defence against very rapidly and antagonistically co-evolving parasites. In his memorable phrase, sexual species are "guilds of genotypes committed to free, fair exchange of biochemical technology for parasite exclusion". He was not the first to advance this theory but he took it more seriously than others and he worked most successfully to define the form of the argument as well as its implications. Notable here was his work with Marlene Zuk on parasites as a key to mate choice. In 1982 they showed that species of birds with higher loads of blood parasites showed more colour and complex song, an unexpected finding unless parasite-rich environments favoured mate choice for these traits, thereby driving up their average value.</div>
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It is hard to capture on paper the beauty of the man and the reason that so many evolutionists felt such a deep personal connection to Bill Hamilton. He had the most subtle, multi-layered mind I have ever encountered. What he said often had double and even triple meanings so that, while the rest of us speak and think in single notes, he thought in chords. He was modest in style, with a warm sense of humour. For example, he had no illusions about the clarity of his lecturing style, and once told a class we taught at Harvard that after hearing him lecture they would wonder whether he understood even his own ideas.</div>
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His letters were laced with humorous asides. He once sent me a news clipping of a human father-to-son testicle transplant, along with the comment, "New vistas for parent-offspring confict?". The last time I saw Bill, at Oxford in December 1998, he pointed with pride to the two, and possibly three, species of moss growing on his Volvo - indeed on its windows - and told me that this was a clear advantage of Oxford over Cambridge, the latter climate being too dry. (He had come to Oxford University in 1984, after seven years at the University of Michigan and 13 at Imperial College, London.)</div>
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Bill Hamilton was a naturalist of legendary knowledge, especially of insects, but he was also an acute observer of human behaviour, right down to the minutiae of your own actions in his presence. Had I noticed, he asked, that lopsided facial expressions in humans are almost exclusively male? (No, but I have seen it a hundred times since then!) He was an evolutionist to the core, and was always heartened by news of fellow evolutionists enjoying some reproductive success. In a similar spirit I take joy in the lives of his three daughters, Helen, Ruth and Rowena, not to mention his many surviving siblings. But the loss of this 'gentle giant' is very great. Bill died at the age of 63 on 7 March 2000, from complications after contracting malaria during fieldwork in the Congo in January, work which was designed to locate more exactly the chimpanzee populations that donated HIV-1 to humans, as well as the mode of transmission. He had been strong in mind, body and spirit, with many new projects and thoughts under way. He will be sorely missed for many years to come.</div>
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Robert Trivers is in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, 131 George Street, New Brunwsick , New Jersey 08901-1414, USA.</div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-90095545633450584512018-11-06T12:44:00.001-08:002018-11-06T16:07:16.155-08:00The Dandelion Clock<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The children, his grand-children, were playing in the paddock at the back of the house where their ponies were kept. They were picking dandelion seed heads and blowing the beautifully formed parachuted seeds away. James smiled and drew heavily on his cigar. Sol had undoubtedly taught them, or taught his daughters who had passed it on. It was a game he and Sol had played as children, blowing the seeds all away, each puff counting an hour. A silly inconsequential game, but just the sort of idiosyncratic thing his old friend Sol loved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James was sitting on the back porch smoking his weekly cigar, waiting for the weekend guests to arrive. Sol was also coming for the weekend, Jane had told him just this morning. So what, he wondered, had enticed him this time? He was a regular dinner party guest at their New York apartment overlooking the Park, where Jane had developed an enviable reputation as a New York hostess, but he almost never came to their country retreat, preferring his own cabin in the mountains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Why did Jane invite him when she knew this was such an important weekend for him? Sol always seemed to set out to insult his guests, especially the ones with a religious bent, but Jane had just shrugged. “I invited him to keep me company. To leaven the dough so to speak.” It made him smile. The filthy rich could be incredibly dull he had to agree, and the powerful very often too frightened of consequences to say anything at all. It was something </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">he and Sol often bantered about, just how such</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">dull people could reach the pinnacles of power.</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Chance, pure chance,” Sol would argue. “Nothing to do with the survival of the fittest.</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Just luck.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“Nothing to do with will and ambition?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">But it was not just the fundamental Christians he went after. “Six million Jews killed in the Holocaust! What about the killing fields of Cambodia, Kosevo, Ruwanda? Tribal resource wars, competition for resources. A drought in Australia kills millions of birds, a force of nature, the holocaust a force of nature.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“How can you say that when you are Jewish.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“I can say it because I am Jewish.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">“How do you live with such a grim view of life?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Like a bird singing happily on its perch with no expectations.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James liked to think Sol was just envious of his enormous wealth and power which enabled him to have presidents as weekend guests and the richest and most powerful as dinner guests. Although Sol was hardly a failure, being emeritus professor at Harvard, and with a world-wide reputation in the field of social insects, he was considered to be heir to Darwin's legacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James' cigar had died. He didn't bother to relight it. It occurred to him that Sol would not be able to do the damage which was possible in the narrow confines of a dinner party. His presence would be diluted by numbers as the main function was to be outdoors, a barbecue of sorts. He felt oddly relieved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Jane appeared for breakfast, a cup of coffee. His “plain” beautiful Jane. She caught his eye and smiled before leaving. It was enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James and Sol as students had vied for her attention. She had chosen him and he didn't know why. Sol had once said it was all a matter of biology, that he was the most suited to be the father of her children. What did that mean? He suspected they had slept together. Maybe still did, and maybe one of their children was really Sol's. He seemed closer to his children, their closest confidante, even Jane agreed. Sol had never married.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James left the porch, picked up the cigar and began a stroll down the lane into the woods. His purpose in inviting them all, the rich and famous, the powerful, was to first of all to inform them of his plans before going public, and to invite them to join him in his latest enterprise, his last hurrah. All his children were there, and his grand-children, to tell them that his immense fortune was all to be spent on trying to find the means of taking humanity off the planet, into the universe. The children all had their own individual lives and would have no worries about inheriting little from him. In that, they were thankful to Jane who insisted that they pursue their own destinies apart </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">from their father, that they should not expect to inherit his great wealth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">As James walked along, he relit his cigar in an effort to marshal his thoughts. It was to be an off the cuff speech, after the feast. All he needed was the first line, the introduction and everything would follow smoothly, practised as he was in public speaking. But Sol being there promised to put him off his stride. He could sense and predict all of Sol's objections to his cause, his ridicule. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The planet was stuffed, James agreed with Sol. Everyone did. “Like army ants we are devouring everything in front of us. We are an insatiable, rapacious, species. As cavemen we moved to every corner of the planet's habitat, from polar regions to the tropics. With our packs of dogs we took down the great megafauna, gathering momentum. We are devouring all the planet's resources to satisfy the biological necessity to replicate, to reproduce.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“We are like an alien species that has mined this planet for its resources, animate and inanimate, nothing has escaped us. We have utterly gutted this planet. Now you are going to tell me that it is time to move on to gut more planets?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“We are facing a huge die off of our species, if we don't do something.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“A die off is necessary so that our numbers will adjust to what the planet can </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">sustain. Only then will we learn.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James drew heavily on the cigar and leant over the fence as he expelled the smoke. Yes. It was useful to take on board Sol's criticisms. It gave a perspective. That was his beginning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Biological success. But was that all there was to it? Wasn't there more to it than biology? Was there not a purpose to it all, a reason for being?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">But there was Sol again. “The only purpose is to reproduce.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James wanted to say more, in the face of Sol's view of the world. Should he talk about man's destiny, about humanity's great achievements?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“Manifest destiny! What makes you think we are special, with the god given right to lord it over every other species on this planet? Homo sapiens' achievements! Nothing more than the peacock's tail. A story to tell on the way to seduction.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“Maths? Physics? “<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“A fiction. Just another construct of the human mind, to ensnare, seduce, enhance our chances of survival.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James continued walking, smoking. Maybe, he thought, getting off the planet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">is part of the biological scheme of things. He had walked around the woodlot and come back to the house. The children were still playing, the dandelions forgotten. He picked up one they had missed, twirled it in his fingers and with one breathe blew the parachuted seeds away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“As you say, perhaps it is just biology. This effort of mine, just a seed blown away though the universe. Our species has about come to maturity, to florescence, like a dandelion head. Let me blow and dispense our seed as far and wide as the winds blow. Most will not take but a few will. We are at the mercy of our biology. We are in charge of nothing. We will be blown wherever chance and necessity takes us. Yes, that was it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">"The dandelion is called the rustic oracle; its flowers always open about 5 A.M. and shut at 8 P.M., serving the shepherd for a clock." <i>Source: Folkard (448. 309), from "The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought," by Alexander F. Chamberlain</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-19807030957793928462018-11-04T16:35:00.002-08:002018-11-06T16:06:13.281-08:00Greytown is my turangawaewae<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Greytown, is my turangawaewae, the place where I stand, the place where I was born. Wellington and the Wairarapa are where my family settled in the nineteenth century, migrating from Christchurch in the South Island, intent upon moving in on land belonging to Maori. My ancestors walked the streets of Wellington, Pahiatua, Masterton and the shores of Paremata and Pahatanui, as I do now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I could have said that Greytown or Te Hupenui, is about an hour’s drive from Wellington, over the Rimutaka mountain range, that it was first settled by Europeans in 1854 on land bought from local Maori, that it was named after Sir George Grey, but I am more interested in saying something about Greytown's natural history, and what the Wairarapa was like before humans, Maori and Pakeha, arrived here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Scientists report from the evidence of pollen grains that before humans arrived here, </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">85-90% of New Zealand, including the Wairarapa, was covered with forest. Grassland or shrubland occurred, as it does now, on river terraces subject to regular flooding, frost-prone valley floors, steep cliffs, and active sand dunes. Outside these limited areas the forest cover was unbroken.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In this forested country, the moa roamed, its only predator the great Haast eagle. It was the land of birds, the only mammals being bats which scurried about the forest floor, and seals that rested on the beaches. Evidence</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">suggests that</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> m</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">oa</span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> nested in the dunes around the </span>Wairarapa<span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> coast and under high rock ledges. Researchers estimate that there were probably near a million roaming through the New Zealand bush. </span>Moa<span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">, now extinct along with the great eagle.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(35, 31, 32);"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Moa being browsers of the forest trees and shrubs, made tracks through the bush. </span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">After the moa had been hunted to extinction,</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">the bush closed in to become virtually impenetrable, as attested by early European explorers and settlers. Evidence has been put forward suggesting that moa used regular tracks, and that these tracks are still visible in various parts of New Zealand. Tracks at Poukawa, Hawke's Bay, have been illustrated. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Maori kept some of the</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">moa ara, the moa tracks, open which in turn were utilised and reformed by Pakeha, so in a sense moa are still with us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In hunting the moa Maori used fire as an agent. Fire transformed the landscape. By the time Europeans came, burnoff by Māori and natural fires had left large areas of grass, fern, and scrubland in the south and east of the Wairarapa. The Tararua Range and the north were still heavily forested. As farming began, most of the lowlands and eastern uplands were cleared of native grasses and re-sown in exotic varieties or given over to horticulture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Seventy Mile Bush, known to Māori as Tapere-nui-a-Whātonga, stretched from the Wairarapa to Hawke’s Bay. Pukaha Mount Bruce is the last substantial remnant of the great forest. It was a conifer–broadleaf forest where the largest trees were tōtara, rimu, rātā and mataī, growing through an understorey of tawa, hīnau, makomako, kōnini, poroporo, kōwhai and lancewood. From the early 1870s the forest was cleared by government-assisted Scandinavian immigrants (and others), who then settled the land. The bush was cleared in a two-step process. The undergrowth was felled in winter and left to dry. The next winter it was set ablaze, engulfing the whole forest. The smoke could be a kilometre across, billowing up to 6,000 metres high. My ancestors were among “the others” who conspired to fell the bush. My father, who was born in Pahiatua in 1892, said in his old age he could still smell the stumps smoldering. His uncle married a Peterson, one of the Danish immigrants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If Maori saw the extinction of the moa, it was left to pakeha to see out the huia, its ivory like beaks turned into brooches and its body stuffed for overseas museums. The utter obscenity of it all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Extinction is an on going thing, and local. How long will Greytown hear pipiwharauroa, the shining cuckoo, or Ruru, the morepork? Kereru are few and could disappear very soon. “</span><span lang="EN" style="color: #231f20; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We no longer see them around here,” the cry goes up and very soon they have gone from everywhere.</span><br />
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-75691909748045902872018-11-02T16:22:00.001-07:002018-11-03T13:44:56.120-07:00They don't know who we are<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">I was sitting over the kitchen table, drinking tea and smoking. The back door was open but no matter how hard I listened I could never hear him coming until he kicked off his boots at the back door. “Sitting in the dark again,” he said as he came in and turned on the light. We blinked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">I poured him a cup of tea and lit another cigarette, tailor made. He sat down and rolled a cigarette. Those were the days when we all smoked, chain smoked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“There are a couple of deer up there,” he said after he had lit his cigarette. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“Yeah,” I said. The pause was long and drawn out. “A hind and her fawn I figure.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">We drank our tea and smoked our cigarettes. I let him come to it in his own time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“I suppose I should shoot them, before someone else does.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">I shrugged and shook my head. I had seen it all before with hunters. Once we get past the age of 30 the old thrill of the hunt goes, and we get all sentimental, become bird watchers and photographers. The same with fishermen. They become whale watchers and pelagic birders. My nephew was well on his way to becoming one of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“We don't need the meat,” I said and left it at that, thinking that if his mother, my sister, was around, she would have had those deer forthwith. It takes all kinds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Warren, my nephew, was staying with me on a fencing contract and every evening he would take his gun to do a bit of hunting, but it was more of just a walk in the bush. Occasional he's bring back a hare for my cats who would scramble up his bare legs as he gutted and skinned it. He always wore black shorts and a dark green swandri. He had a heavy, drooping moustache which gave him a sad vulnerable look. It made him a hit with the girls. “You often find deer now in small patches of bush. Refugees,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Warren stayed with me for several months on the farm. It had a patch of some 20 acres of bush, on a ridge which eventually led all the way into the Ureweras, so there was no surprise about the deer. He loved it. Kereru in the puriri trees, falcons, and coveys of quail, trout in the river, wild turkeys and pea fowl, as well as the deer. He thought it was just paradise. I will never know now why I didn't take him on permanently. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The deer stayed on and multiplied over the next fifteen years or so. Walking up the hill to check the stock, I would often find a couple of deer walking up ahead of me. They grazed with the cattle at the top of the farm, near the bush line. They became so secure, I could watch through my binoculars, a stag rampant on the hill roaring at the stags on the farm across the river. It couldn't last, I knew.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The peace was broken by the sound of a helicopter one morning. It was at the top of the farm along the bush line. I called my neighbour. “There's a huge stag up there!” I could hear the thrill of the hunt in his voice. Blood lust. Some men just never grow up. “Can't you just leave them there. Do you have to kill everything in sight?” He hung up on me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">I was up there at dawn the next morning, waiting for them, with my gun. I made sure they saw me. I won't say I threatened them. I didn't fire my gun. They didn't come back. A week or so later sitting at the kitchen table one night, sitting over a pot of tea as usual, smoking, I caught the blinking lights of spotlights in the bush. I continued to sit there, raging about it, debating whether to take my gun and confront them. I was at an age when spending the rest of my life in jail wouldn't matter much. I walked away from it, feeling like one of those who did nothing to stop the Nazis exterminating the Jews.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">I sold the farm. I didn't want to live with neighbours who had no respect. I listen to the radio about the greenies trying to save the lions, the rhinos, the elephants, and whatever. They just don't know who we are. We will hunt out every last one of them. That's who we are. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-41235301857116667932011-12-16T13:46:00.000-08:002018-11-06T16:03:44.513-08:00Blackbirds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Walking my dog today, I noticed that a few of the feijoas are flowering. The feijoas made me think of blackbirds, Turdus merula. <br />
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Unlike the thrush which sings through the winter, the blackbird remains silent until the spring when it becomes an annual competition among birders to record the first blackbird singing. The song usually ceases in December but has been heard as late as February. The blackbird's song is very much the largest part of the dawn chorus here in town and far out numbers the Tui's. Last summer there was a blackbird which persisted in singing at night on top of the old council building accoss the road, something to do with the street lighting, I suppose.<br />
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Ornithologists have noted that birdsong uses the same musical scales as we do. <span lang="en">Certainly many composers and poets have taken a great deal from birdsong. Mozart had his pet starling and Beethoven his blackbird, which may be heard in the opening rondo of Beethoven's violin concerto in D, Opus 61. In many species it appears that although the basic song is the same for all members of the species, young birds learn some details of their songs from their fathers, and these variations build up over generations to form dialects. Living in towns and cities birds pick up other sounds as well and may incorporate them into their songs.</span><br />
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But I digress. I started out talking of feijoas which in their native South America are pollinated by birds, mostly the tanagers. The blackbird, together with the myna, have learned the trick of pollinating them in New Zealand. Small birds, such as white-eyes, visit feijoa flowers but research here has revealed that they are ineffective pollinators.</div>
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I used to watch blackbirds from the kitchen window on my farm in the Bay of Plenty take apart the feijoa flowers, feeding on the sweet and juicy petals of the brightly coloured flowers, but have yet to see them perform the same trick here in Greytown. My blackbirds here seem to prefer cherries and grapes, while the feijoas languish and produce very little fruit. I'm curious to know whether or not anyone has observed them pollinating feijoas here.<br />
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-60781852903809716982011-11-03T19:57:00.000-07:002018-11-06T16:02:54.112-08:00Dunnock<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The dunnock, or house sparrow as some call it, is one of those LBJs as birders call them, “little brown jobs”, drab insigificant birds that are so easily overlooked and mistaken for sparrows. In point of fact, they belong to quite different families, dunnocks are accentors and sparrows are weavers. For the very observant, there are a good many of them in Greytown.</div>
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The dunnock is quiet in colour and in manner, unobtrusive rather than shy and will quietly scout about the driveway or under the bushes while I observe it, taking quick peeks at me, just to see what I am about. They have their own special character.<br />
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Their bodies are slate grey, streaked with a reddish brown, the deep brown upper mantle streaked black with a slate grey throat and chest and paler lightly striped under parts. They have a fine pointed black bill, unlike the sparrow, for catching insects. They sing in a neat precise manner, as if repeating something learnt by heart.<br />
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Their natural breeding range is Europe and western Asia. Several hundred birds were introduced here in New Zealand by the Acclimatisation Societies and private individuals between the 1860 and 1880s.<br />
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The Dunnock exhibits mating diversity comparable to that of humans: there are monogamous pairs, polyandrous females with their mates, polygynous males with their mates, and polygynandrous groups of males and females, each of whom has multiple mates. Polyandry is rare in birds, with only about 2% of species showing such a mating system.<br />
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The hen, apparently with some help from the cock builds the nest which is well concealed in thick undergrowth or a hedge, normally very close to the ground. It is a neat bowl of twigs, grass and moss lined with hair, feathers and moss.<br />
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The diet is mainly small invertebrates, beetles, spiders, flies, aphids, ants and worms. Some small fruits and seeds are also eaten. Most food is taken from the ground, usually not far away from cover.<br />
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In spite of being such nondescript birds, they are birds that have gained a lot of attention by people who matter. The famous eighteenth century naturalist, Gilbert White of Selbourne, thought them fine birds but called them hedge sparrows. He observed that they have a remarkable flirt with their wings in breeding time and as soon as frosty mornings come they make a very plaintive piping noise.<br />
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Emily Bronte knew the bird by the name dunnock and also knew that it is frequently a foster–parent of a cuckoo. In Wuthering Heights Ellen Dean is asked what she knows of the history of Heathcliff. She replies, “It’s a cuckoo’s, sir... and Hareton has been caste out like an unfledged dunnock”.<br />
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The cuckoos in Europe do indeed make shameless use of them but if our cuckoos do the same to them here, there seems to be no record, nor much interest as they are introduced birds..<br />
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-47694349590266242812011-08-12T16:34:00.000-07:002018-11-10T16:49:31.057-08:00Prions wrecked<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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More than a week of severe storms blowing up from the Antarctic has left thousands of sea birds wrecked across New Zealand, not just along the coast but well inland. A local landowner brought in a bird for me this morning, wanting me to help indentify it. After much measuring of the dead bird and consulting of the identification guides, we determined quite confidently that it was a broad-billed prion, and not an antarctic prion which were being reported as being wrecked in large numbers in and around Wellington. The local bird rescuer, the reverend Robin List, confirmed that all the birds he had coming in from around the Wairarapa were broad-billed. <br />
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A wreck is when very large numbers of seabirds die and become wrecked around the coast. Sometimes it involves mainly one species, or at other times several species. Some wrecks seem to be caused by storms catching young birds a few days after leaving their nests, others by storms combined with a food shortage. Birds found dead or dying on the beaches are usually only a small fraction of what is occurring at sea. New Zealand lies in the path of seabirds moving eastward in winter from the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Wrecks of 13,000 prions that came ashore in New Zealand during June and July 1964 showed obvious signs of starvation as did a wreck of prions that occurred in 1981 in South Africa and in Chile in 2007. Analysis of dead birds washed up on the world's coasts remains one of the main ways of studying seabird movements throughout the year. The El Nino/Southern Oscillation, a warm water Equatorial current that irregularly flows south along the Chilean and Peruvian coasts is well known to disrupt marine and terrestrial ecosystems and to raise havoc among some seabird populations.<br />
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Prions are small birds with blue-grey colouring. The broad-billed prion is characterised by its large broad bill and is found throughout oceans and coastal areas in the Southern Hemisphere. Its colonies can be found on many islands around the coast of New Zealand, in Fiordland, Solander Islands, Foveaux Strait, the Chatham Islands and sub-Antarctic Antipodes Islands. It is probably from these colonies that maybe up to 500,000 birds have been lost, the largest wreck ever recorded.<br />
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The broad-billed prion was observed off the East Cape in 1769 during Cook's first voyage and again at Dusky Sound in 1773 by Forster, during Cook's second voyage.<br />
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The broad-billed prions diet consists mainly of planktonic crustaceans, but, like other Antarctic prions, it uses its special bill to filter this food from the water. The bill has comb-like fringes called lamellae, similar in principle to the filter plates of baleen whales. It feeds by running across the ocean surface with its bill open under water, moving its head from side to side and skimming for food. <br />
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Breeding begins on the coastal slopes of the breeding islands in July or August. The parents incubate the egg for 50 days, and then spend another 50 days raising the chick. Colonies disperse from December onwards. <br />
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The prions belong to the Procellariiformes, which were formerly called Tubinares, or tubenoses, and now are generally called petrels. They are almost exclusively pelagic and have a cosmopolitan distribution across the world's oceans, with the highest diversity being around New Zealand.<br />
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Procellariiformes have an enlarged nasal gland at the base of the bill, above they eyes. This gland rids the birds of the salt they ingest from sea water. </div>
narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-85565034946726210492011-08-12T16:32:00.000-07:002018-11-10T16:50:53.005-08:00Spur-winged Plover<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Walking along North Street with my dog, always there are spur-winged plovers to be seen in the paddocks. There used to be two or three pairs but this winter I see just the one pair. I hope this is not a trend!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Travelling throughout New Zealand, especially through farmland, the one bird that one is most likely to see is the spur–winged plover, very often being harried by and, in turn, harrying a harrier hawk. However, spur-winged plovers did not used to be so widespread, the first pair recorded breeding at Invercargill airport in 1932. In spite of the heavy predation of their chicks by harrier hawks and our national propensity for using birds for target practice, their numbers have now become so great that there is talk of culling them. Not a good reason, I would think.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">There are two well marked races of this bird; the smaller race, </span><em><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Vanellus miles novaehollandiae</span></em><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">, originally just bred in the south–east of Australia but then extended its range to Tasmania and New Zealand. The other, northern, race, </span><em><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Vanellus miles miles</span></em><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">, has extended its range from northern Australia to New Guinea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Both races frequent wet grasslands but will readily adapt to man–made habitats such as pastures, sports grounds, airfields and even median strips on busy roads. Indeed, one will often see them on median strips while driving to Wellington. Somehow they seem to have worked out that their chicks will be safe there from cats and harrier hawks. Their liking for airports however, is not a good idea as it leaves them open to some severe culling because of the fear of bird strike.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">This large plover has a black crown, hind neck and shoulders, with the back and wings brown in colour. The underparts are white and the legs and feet are reddish. The bill is yellow and the bird has a yellow facial patch and prominent wattles. It has spurs on its wings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">The spur–winged plover feeds mainly on insects, worms and similar small invertebrates but will also eat seeds. Their main call is a loud, penetrating rattle, often heard at night which may explain why many people have grown to hate them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Breeding is between June and late November with the peak in August. Several clutches are laid each year. The nest is a scrape in the ground, unlined or scantily lined, situated in rough open pasture, a flat wet area or on stony ground. The clutch of 1 – 4 khaki eggs with brownish, black blotches is incubated by both sexes for 30-31 days. The fledging period is 7 – 8 weeks.</span></div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-19123397254307683672011-06-09T19:54:00.000-07:002011-06-09T19:54:52.426-07:00Miromiro, the tomtit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is a rumour of a tomtit in Greytown. Perhaps a black fantail missing its tail? Difficult to know without a photograph and sightings may be so fleeting that mistakes are made. However, though not likely, it is possible, as there are tomtits close by in the bush in the Waiohine Gorge.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Tomtits are bush birds, not known to frequent towns, but with the storms of late they may have blown into town or just found their way down the Waiohine River. Bellbirds were late in finding a home in our suburbs so it is possible that tomtits could follow their path. There seems to me to be a curious segregation between our endemic birds and the introduced birds we find in our gardens, which by and large shun the bush. Except for the Tui, the bellbird, and Kereru, our endemic birds such as the robin, tomtit, stitchbird, tieke, kakariki, rifleman and Kiwi, shun our presence and stay in the bush. Would that they could find their way into our gardens.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>There are five sub-species of Miromiro, the tomtit; North Island tomtit, <em>toitoi</em>, South Island tomtit, <em>macrocephala</em>, Chatham Island tomtit, <em>chathamensis</em>, Snares Island tomtit, <em>dannefaerdi</em>, and Auckland Island tomtit, <em>marrineri</em>.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="container"></a>Our bird, the North Island tomit, the male is a distinctive black and white, with a black head and a white spot above the bill, black upperparts and upper breast, white underparts, and a white wing bar and sides. Its mate is a dull grey and brown and is not so often seen as the male.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>The male tomtit has been described as having a cheery little song which he repeats without much variation at frequent intervals, The call notes of both are the more notable, being loud and piercing and repeated rapidly three or four times with widely–opened bill. To hear them suddenly after a long silence in the bush may be quite disturbing. Maori had many superstitions regarding this bird of Maui. <br />
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</div></div>narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-48867430366428115962011-05-27T19:15:00.000-07:002018-11-17T19:37:05.436-08:00Putangitangi, the paradise shelduck<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This being the duck shooting season, paradise ducks in the paddocks around Greytown are especially wary and start sounding the alarm even though I am still a great distance away, walking my dog as I am want to do. The male has the deeper voice, dueting with his mate as they fly off.</div>
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Putangitangi, the paradise shelduck, is endemic to New Zealand, that is it is found nowhere else in the world. It was discovered first by Captain Cook at Dusky Sound in 1773 during his second voyage. Cook called it the Painted Duck. They were not a common bird before settlement by Europeans but are now the one endemic bird which has prospered with the conversion of native forest to pasture. They have increased greatly in numbers through this century and are now only partially protected.<br />
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They are a large duck and are always seen in pairs except during the moulting season. The drake has a black head with a greenish gloss, the body being dark grey barred with black. The undertail and tertials are orange chestnut. The duck has a white head and the body is a bright orange chestnut.<br />
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They mainly graze on grass and weeds, or standing crops of peas or grain which can mean they often get on the wrong side of farmers. <br />
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Most paradise duck start breeding when 2 years old and pairs remain together from year to year, returning to the same nesting area. If one bird dies, its mate occupies the same territory and re-mates again. Having adapted to New Zealand when it was largely forested, they are able to nest in trees, in the epiphytes which festoon many New Zealand treees, but now they usually nest on the ground, well hidden beneath a log or clumps of grass. The ducklings have a striking pattern of brown and white down but when they fledge at around eight weeks they resemble adult males, except the females have whiter patches around the eyes and the base of the bill.<br />
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Ducks provided Maori with quite a considerable portion of their food supply in some favoured districts, including the Wairarapa. When the ducks were moulting they became very fat and it was at this time that the rahui, which protected the birds during their breeding season, was lifted. The birds having become flightless, could be collected, driven and herded from open lake waters into the water plants lining the shores and there caught in very large numbers. Women and children often took part in the drive, everyone entering the canoes and to make a pleasure jaunt of it. Dogs were also used to capture the birds.<br />
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Sir W. Buller tells us that in 1867, 7000 duck were taken in three days at lake Rotomahana. Similar numbers were also being taken at other lakes at the same time. The ducks taken were primarily Parera, the grey duck, but paradise duck were also among the numbers. This was long before Mallard ducks were introduced. When such large numbers of birds were taken many of them were cooked and preserved in their fat in gourds or bark vessels.</div>
narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-77178984714291952182011-03-05T17:40:00.000-08:002018-11-17T19:35:03.795-08:00Goldfinches<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There are a lot of goldfinches in and around Greytown. Indeed, I think they could be the most numerous of birds around here, nothwithstanding sparrows have had something of a comeback this summer. Soon the finches will be flocking for the winter and “charms” of over a hundred goldfinches twittering about the district will be quite common. With their bright red faces and gold wing bars they flutter merrily from plant to plant, often hanging upside down to extract seeds. </div>
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The natural range of the goldfinch is Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia. Their commonest European name of thistlefinch has been gained because they are particularly fond of the seeds of thistles, particularly the sow thistle.<br />
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They were introduced into New Zealand in the 1860s along with other European birds and are probably now more numerous here than in Europe. They were also introduced into Argentina, Bermuda and Australia.<br />
The goldfinch has figured very large in European folklore and the earliest English literature. The cook in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales was described as being “as merry as a goldfinch in the woods” — <em>gaillard he was as a goldfynch in the shawe.</em><br />
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Because of their liking for thistles, goldfinches were adopted by Renaissance artists to symbolise the Passion of Christ. In Baroccio’s ‘Holy Family’ a goldfinch is held in the hand of St John who holds it high out of reach of an interested cat. In Cima’s ‘Madonna and Child’, a goldfinch flutters in the hand of the Christ Child.<br />
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Recently on the NZ Birding news group a birder from the UK was asking birders here if they had noticed any evolutionary changes to the birds introduced into NZ from Europe, considering that these birds have now been here for about 150 years. <br />
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It is the classic Darwinian scenario, following the story of the finches on the Galapagos Islands which were so instrumental in formulating his theory of evolution. A very small number of birds, carrying just a portion of the species genetic potential will over time change and radiate to fill the ecological niches which we may offer. Isolated from their parent birds, unlike Australian introduced birds, these birds will in time become truly our own and probably quite different from their European counterparts. </div>
narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-48260371437737156452011-02-17T00:08:00.000-08:002011-02-17T00:08:05.250-08:00Letter: Lake Wairarapa is no pristine paradise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="red_bold_text"><strong><span style="color: #d12421;">OPINION:</span></strong></span> Contrary to the tone of your article (A Watery Treasure, Jan 29), Lake Wairarapa is a national disgrace. A recent Niwa report has placed the Wairarapa waterway in the top 10 worst lakes in New Zealand with regard to water quality. <br />
Greater Wellington regional council chairwoman Fran Wilde says the council is going to get stock out of water, fence waterways, plant natives, get rid of invasive weeds and improve access, but I fear once again it is all talk. And if there are still godwits on the lake's margins, one would never know as access is well nigh impossible. <br />
Greater Wellington regional council could follow the example of Hawke's Bay Regional Council with the work they have done with Pekapeka swamp and finally do something for the Wairarapa environment - at least, meet their statutory responsibilities. <br />
<strong>NARENA OLLIVER</strong> <br />
<strong>Greytown</strong><br />
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<a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/4611844/Letter-Lake-Wairarapa-is-no-pristine-paradise">http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/4611844/Letter-Lake-Wairarapa-is-no-pristine-paradise</a></div>narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-59612827921967689392011-01-28T16:31:00.001-08:002018-11-17T19:37:56.678-08:00Butterflies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Having developed the habit of watching out for birds, then one is also likely to observe those other beautiful creatures on the wing, butterflies. </div>
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The Monarch butterflies are hard to miss as they float about our gardens, alighting on some flower or leaf, giving us time to observe and admire. They are just so voluptuous drifting about the garden before being carried off like any baggage by some male to keep sequestered. Our own endemic butterflies, the red and yellow admirals, however, are likely to be missed as they flit very quickly away before one has a chance to observe their beautiful colouring, the patterns of yellow and the red on black.</div>
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Gibbs, the grandson of our most illustrious entomologist G.V. Hudson, claims the Monarch is a native, having got here under its own steam, following the plantings of the milkweeds by missionaries across the Pacific Islands. However, with their legendary ability to fly over enormous distances, they may well have arrived in NZ somwhat earlier as Maori seem to have had knowledge of these butterflies, the larvae of which are able to survive on the leaves of gourds but need the milkweeds to thrive and multiply.</div>
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The yellow and red admirals on the other hand are without question endemic to New Zealand. Although they are not fussy about the nettles they need to sustain their larvae, whether or not they are native or introduced. I have to confess, I have been busy planting nettles under the trees at the back of the garden, not just to encourage the butterflies but also to eat myself. </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Pohuehue (</span></span><em><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Muehlenbeckia australis</span></span></em><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">) vines grow all over Greytown, climbing over shrubs and trees and no doubt mistaken for some obnoxious weed to be rooted out. This little climber the copper butterflies favour but I have yet to see one in Greytown. Some bird though must find it useful as the plants keep coming up in my back yard so that I am now busy training some plants over the fence with the hope that some day some copper butterflies might turn up here.</span></span><br />
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I seem to remember clouds of small butterflies, blues and whites, arising out of the summer grass but haven't seen it in so many years I wonder if it was the stuff of dreams. The younger generations will never miss what they have never seen, and we will quickly forget. </div>
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narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10332476.post-72699121212628571342011-01-16T14:53:00.000-08:002018-11-16T13:03:07.016-08:00Biological control of Australian brush-tailed possums<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dear Sir<br />
The Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment has raised the issue<br />
of biological control of possums. Some 15-20 years ago possums in my<br />
neck of the woods in the eastern Bay of Plenty were virtually wiped<br />
out by a virulent strain of "wobbly possum syndome". The controversy<br />
surrounding the control of possums and 1080 was raging then as now and<br />
biological control was being actively pursued. A virologist visited my<br />
farm to collect samples. I heard nothing more of his efforts and the<br />
possibility of biological control seemed to just disappear from the<br />
scene. I gathered from other sources that Australian wildlife<br />
officials objected to the development of a bio control agent as they<br />
feared it would jump the Tasman and wipe out their (protected)<br />
possums. I am curious to know where this issue is now.<br />
Incidently, for those who oppose the use of 1080, watching possums die<br />
of wobbly possum syndrome was very distressing.<br />
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Published Dominion Post, January 17, 2011</div>
narenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15004388540558515074noreply@blogger.com0