Christopher Stephens

A BIG tick on my wishlist, the South Island Lichen Moth (Declana egregia). Check your $100 bill the next time you have one for some mysterious reason people 💸💸

If the bus replacement is 12 mins later then, what's the fucking point? The next train is in 7 mins and will easily beat it to Wellington.

Until such time as I do move entirely, this is still a place to scream Fucking @metlinkwgtn , with cancelled commuter trains at peak time on the HVL, with bus replacements that don't exist, on a day pouring with rain.

@Invertebratist Colin Miskelly and Annemieke were mostly pulling from burrows, a couple were picked up hanging around in the surface (prospecting burrows, looking for a fight, etc)

@CMKMStephens How did you catch them？

and here's some Fairy Prions and band checking. Apart from maybe some documentation with photos I'm not sure I did anything useful though. I did hold/restrain a Fairy Prion briefly - it wasn't happy about it - not the little claws in 3rd photo.

That's probably enough, so I'll just leave you with this perfect day.

I've realised I forgot about the NI Mātātā / Fernbirds. Having been translocated several years ago now, the island is FULL of them. Peeping (verbally, visually) at you at all times, in all places.

Took excessively detailed macro shots of the flower of the NZ Iceplants

Rauhuia (Linum monogynum ssp. monogynum) likewise.

Clematis forsteri was just starting up

Botanically, the best thing was probably finally getting to see Cook Strait Māhoe (Melicytus orarius) in its prolific full flower.

@shaunryan I'm certainly a weevil enthusiast, but I've only seen 55 species...and there are 100s of them in NZ alone: inaturalist.nz/observations?p…) perhaps even an Honorary Associate Weevil Cadet through a bit of field work on Mana and elsewhere.

@CMKMStephens You seem very knowledgeable about these weevil things. Do you ever get called a weevil genuis?

For the pit trap monitoring, it's due to the weevils again, ie, how do lizards and invertebrates fare after the flax weevils have annihilated all the flaxes they liked to live in? I've never handled so many lizards before, but great experience. Northern grass skink

No trip to Mana Island is complete without coastal jumping spiders. These are 'Marpissa marina', though almost certainly a complex of different species across the country. I had to wait perfectly still above the spider's lookout pebble, as they kept going down among the rocks.

My 'big' score for the weekend was finally getting some photos of Hutton's Speargrass Weevil (Lyperobius huttoni) These were translocated from Te Kopahou Reserve on on the Wellington south coast. I've never managed to find them there, nor on Mana until now.

Male and female korimako going nuts over flowering and fruiting Five-finger/psuedopanax/houhou

Male bellbird/korimako, surveying the kingdom.

A pōpokatea/whitehead

Overall, and without having any intent of groping them, the birds were a bit hard to get shots of - unusual. Usually I come away with a zillion kākāriki photos. Here's some of the better Yellow-crowned kākāriki photos.

On the 2nd night I hadn't been tasked to anything, so I went out to the cliffs for the artificial burrow monitoring - checking occupation and bands of Fairy Prions/tītī wainui and Diving Petrels/kuaka. Here's a Diving Petrel

To round off the geckos and skinks, a side goal on the island was to get some more shots of the McGregor's Skink - a big one that likes sunny beaches, and is relict to just some offshore islands. and this was achieved.

and by day...so long as there were flaxes left!