Today was our last trip to Pukekauri dam with the students before the holidays. It turned out to be a very interesting visit!

We began our trap check and reached station 7, where Steve and I had left a rat in our DOC200 the previous week in the hopes of luring something else in. However, it was not to be. We found only a rat head left at station 2, likely the remains of a meal from another predator.

Students got quite a surprise when they reached station 1 today (we had our trap cam set up here the previous week). In our DOC200 was none other than a feral cat which had managed to squeeze its way in. Not the target predator for this trap, but one less for the birds nonetheless. It appears that the cats are one of the main hunters up at the dam, so students have begun discussions around what we may do next to combat this.

In other news, shortly after our arrival, there was much excitement as a lone Weweia graced us with its calm presence on the dam. It dove into the water for long periods of time and would pop up further down the dam. Perhaps this is the male and its mate and chicks are safely hidden in the reeds at the moment. Unfortunately it was the one time we didn’t have a good pair of binoculars, hence the lochness-like look of the photo below, but we assure you, it WAS there!

We are very thankful to the Waipu MenzShed for their generous donations of trap kits for the kids to put together. Great to add to the trap line! We look forward to building them.

In summary of our trapping to date, we have caught:

13 rats, 10 mice, 1 weasel and 1 feral cat.

Our most popular traps for predators appear to be the rat traps at stations 3, 4 and 7 and our DOC200 at station 7.

Each week we have caught at least one predator and we are now working on fully documenting our 5-minute bird counts (5MBC) to hopefully see the difference we are making across the year. Today’s bird count is below.

Thanks to Ari, Steve and Xavier, along with all our parent helpers and everyone else who has been involved in making this project come to life. We look forward to next term!