After visiting the site again on Thursday, we had only caught 1 mouse in the traps this week and I only collected 1 mouse the previous week. We discussed potential reasons for the lull in catches: change in weather, old bait, other predators could have some possible influence.
We changed out all the baits on the DOC200’s with fresh salted rabbit and removed any leftover bait from the site. Steve taught us that if we leave our old bait behind and just throw it into the bush for disposal, then predators can find it and may become trap shy over time when they find something similar in a trap.
We have enlisted a student from each school to enter our data into TrapNZ and our first representative from Waipu, did a great job! We record: catch if any, trap and bait status and then what lure is replaced if any for each trap.
Hard at work capturing all our data. 
Our Bream Bay College students have been learning to set the DOC200 traps safely.
The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day to be out and about checking in on our progress as always.
