The History Of Pest Free Ngakuta Bay
In March 2019 I set up more traps around the wetland. These were discarded traps that Neil had collected from Picton Dawn Chorus. He had the bright idea that we could use them in Ngakuta Bay! One day when a DOC representative happened to be present, a group of us asked permission to set the traps along the western side of Ngakuta Bay on what we now call the Nikau Trap Line. Neil had brought out a utility truck load from Picton Dawn Chorus because they were had been built too short to use in case wekas poked their heads in. Neil refurbished them and made them longer. Because we had a few people there at the time - Gary and Judy, and Neil’s brother, Neil said ‘let’s do it now’. So we immediately headed off with the traps and a GPS, and placed twenty trap boxes to set up the line. Thus began the next stage in the evolution of Pest-Free Ngakuta Bay!
In 2018 a banded rail, an uncommon bird in this area, was spotted in the wetland. Then in 2019 a fernbird was sighted. It would be very special if they settled here. It made us realise that we had to trap more aggressively around the wetland, and extend the trapping further afield. In March 2019 we set up a trap line along the shore of Little Ngakuta (Kotare line) and later a line on the Link Pathway along the eastern side of the bay. This line, known as Bridle Track East, started out with 20 traps but we subsequently extended it to 40 traps.
In October 2019, while I was away, a further 20 traps were set up along the western end of the Link Pathway, Bridle Track West. Judy had managed to enlist some more volunteers to help out on that line.
Focusing on trap lines, at the end of 2019, we put out self-setting A24s along the roadside to the Tukaputira Point at the western tip of Ngakuta Bay. A couple of weeks later we put out traps on the eastern peninsula. At that stage we stopped because we were running out of people to service the traps.
Then in March 2021 Neil had another bright idea - to make a trap line that would go up over the western ridge to link up with a track up from Momorangi Bay. So a few of the volunteers set about cutting a track through some pretty gnarly stuff and set up possum traps (Kakariki line) up the ridge.
Up to that stage we had not been particularly concentrating on possums, although a few people now have possum traps out and about.
The next stage was that Neil drew sponsorship of $5000 per year for three years, from two Ngakuta Bay bach owners. This has enabled us to buy good boxes and self-resetting traps and really expand our project. It has enabled us to become much more professional than previously. We also set out several possum traps where volunteers could check on them.
We are a small number of volunteers - reliable and dedicated. It is a nice, close knit group who know each, understand each other and are aware of what is happening. However we really could do with more help in order to keep the project going for the foreseeable future. We get lots of positive comments from bach owners who come down for the weekend, or Christmas holidays. It is encouraging, they are noticing a difference, but it would be great if some would offer to help. We have one bach owner who is totally dedicated. He is laying out traps and reporting back on what he is catching. If more bach owners were doing similar things we would really be getting on top of it. But then we are a pretty small community, probably about 40 permanent residents, mostly retired, so it is a big ask.
In March 2019 I set up more traps around the wetland. These were discarded traps that Neil had collected from Picton Dawn Chorus. He had the bright idea that we could use them in Ngakuta Bay! One day when a DOC representative happened to be present, a group of us asked permission to set the traps along the western side of Ngakuta Bay on what we now call the Nikau Trap Line. Neil had brought out a utility truck load from Picton Dawn Chorus because they were had been built too short to use in case wekas poked their heads in. Neil refurbished them and made them longer. Because we had a few people there at the time - Gary and Judy, and Neil’s brother, Neil said ‘let’s do it now’. So we immediately headed off with the traps and a GPS, and placed twenty trap boxes to set up the line. Thus began the next stage in the evolution of Pest-Free Ngakuta Bay!
In 2018 a banded rail, an uncommon bird in this area, was spotted in the wetland. Then in 2019 a fernbird was sighted. It would be very special if they settled here. It made us realise that we had to trap more aggressively around the wetland, and extend the trapping further afield. In March 2019 we set up a trap line along the shore of Little Ngakuta (Kotare line) and later a line on the Link Pathway along the eastern side of the bay. This line, known as Bridle Track East, started out with 20 traps but we subsequently extended it to 40 traps.
In October 2019, while I was away, a further 20 traps were set up along the western end of the Link Pathway, Bridle Track West. Judy had managed to enlist some more volunteers to help out on that line.
Focusing on trap lines, at the end of 2019, we put out self-setting A24s along the roadside to the Tukaputira Point at the western tip of Ngakuta Bay. A couple of weeks later we put out traps on the eastern peninsula. At that stage we stopped because we were running out of people to service the traps.
Then in March 2021 Neil had another bright idea - to make a trap line that would go up over the western ridge to link up with a track up from Momorangi Bay. So a few of the volunteers set about cutting a track through some pretty gnarly stuff and set up possum traps (Kakariki line) up the ridge.
Up to that stage we had not been particularly concentrating on possums, although a few people now have possum traps out and about.
The next stage was that Neil drew sponsorship of $5000 per year for three years, from two Ngakuta Bay bach owners. This has enabled us to buy good boxes and self-resetting traps and really expand our project. It has enabled us to become much more professional than previously. We also set out several possum traps where volunteers could check on them.
We are a small number of volunteers - reliable and dedicated. It is a nice, close knit group who know each, understand each other and are aware of what is happening. However we really could do with more help in order to keep the project going for the foreseeable future. We get lots of positive comments from bach owners who come down for the weekend, or Christmas holidays. It is encouraging, they are noticing a difference, but it would be great if some would offer to help. We have one bach owner who is totally dedicated. He is laying out traps and reporting back on what he is catching. If more bach owners were doing similar things we would really be getting on top of it. But then we are a pretty small community, probably about 40 permanent residents, mostly retired, so it is a big ask.
Dianne's Grey Warbler
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Yes, I probably do but it is not so easy because, with all the other stuff that is going on, I suppose I have actually almost let that go. The other day I realised that a lot of that is because I have become so used to seeing the birds in our garden that it is no longer a fact worth recording. It is an indication that it has become normal to see these birds in my garden, rather than a rarity. For example currently my favourite little bush bird is a grey warbler and every day I have a grey warbler coming around here. So there must be more grey warblers about, or else there is one, that has chosen our garden to visit every day!
What about the rail? Have you ever seen that bird again? The first sighting was by three people who had gone down to the wetland and they each saw a slightly different part of the bird, but by putting the three pieces together they decided it had to be a banded rail. Then one morning Gary thought he saw it, but he wasn’t sure because he wasn’t sure what a rail looked like. He knew it wasn’t a pukeko and it was too small for a weka. Then a few weeks ago it came out of the reeds and I saw it. So the exciting thing about that is that it has been around for a couple of years. I thought it would probably move on. They are very hard to see. Some people recognise the call, but even that is very cryptic. It would take real expert on rails to confidently identify the call. I have heard one story of a respected bird watcher in Mahikapawa, seeing a rail and six years later seeing it again. So our rail may be one that came here as a juvenile and decided to stay. I have not seen it again but I am confident on my sighting. |
The fern bird was even funnier because I have travelled the whole of the South Island looking for fernbirds. Even with the Bird Group when we were going to do a count of fernbirds we got zero count! Then I was down in the wetland checking traps when I heard a little noise. I thought it had to be my imagination! I thought it sounded like a fernbird but I thought ‘why did I even think that’ because I had never actually heard a fernbird but had been told what they sound like. My son was with me, I told him to be quiet, and I listened again. I thought ‘nah, I just want it to be a fernbird’. But then the thing flew into a tree right beside me. It landed there and let me know it definitely was a fernbird! I never saw it again but I did hear it for a couple weeks when I was down there. But it flew away, on the move, I guess. It does show that there is a definite potential for these rarities to actually come and make our little patch of wetland their home.
Can I ask you at this stage, because it is very obvious that you have all this bird knowledge, can you go back and just explain your involvement with birds.
How far back do you want?! There were a couple of little stories which started me off when I was a child. One of them was looking out of my bedroom window in winter. There was a tree with red berries and this amazing bird came to eat the berries. I called my mother. She didn’t know what it was, and we didn’t Google in those days! We finally found out that it was an unusual bird that sometimes travelled south from Scandanavia (and Britain was south). It was a Waxwing which was rarely seen in UK so I thought that was interesting. I don’t know how it started but I had these amazing posters of British birds in my room, and I just loved them. There was no background to my interest – my mother was interested in nature, but there was no real interest in birds. She developed an interest later in life when she was able to go on bird trips in her retirement. So she is very knowledgeable on birds now. The other story was that I was on holidays with my grandparents in Northern Ireland. Somebody had seen this rare bird, a chough. It is like a black bird but slightly bigger, with a red beak and red legs. It had been seen along the north coast. This man, a friend of my grandmother, turned up with his dog to look for this bird. I said ‘could I come too’. I think I was about nine. This man must have been really game to take me and my friend. He gave us this really stern lecture before we went. He said ‘now this dog is trained, and when I say ‘sit and be quiet’ the dog does just that! I expect you two to do the same!!’ Maybe he didn’t mean sit, but he certainly meant that we were to be quiet! So we tiptoed after him across all these paddocks. It was getting darker and darker. Anyway finally he spotted one of these choughs sitting on a rock. He was so excited about it that his excitement passed down to me. I’m not sure if it did to my friend, Jen. It gave me an example of how to bird watch and what is entailed. You don’t just go and see a bird. You have to actually work at it.
It didn’t really take off from there. I was always interested in birds and had a bird book handy where ever I went. But never really went birding as such, it was incidental sightings, and I would tick the box to say that I had seen that bird. When we came to Marlborough in 2001 we became members of Forest and Bird.
One of the speakers was a man called Brian Bell, one of NZ’s most amazing ornithologists. He said that the Ornithological Society of NZ had just established a branch in Marlborough. I said to Andrew that while Forest and Bird is fine, it was actually the birds I wanted! So we joined OSNZ and started doing things with them. I just continued to learn. I discovered that bird counting is something you should do. That it is all useful information for the future. So really it my passion about birds just grew from there. I can sit and watch birds all day. I do keep lists but I am more interested in doing something useful. Not just sitting watching the birds as in ticking boxes. I am much more interested in actually achieving something out of bird watching – as in numbers, behaviour, understanding what birds are actually doing.
Have you had an opportunity to do that in a scientific way?
With Picton Dawn Chorus and Kaipupu, I organise and do the annual bird counts which are then documented on the eBird register which is an international citizen-science data base. This is accessible by anybody who wants to do research about birds. I also record the bird counts onto the Bird Atlas which is another project where the presence or absence of birds, and bird numbers, is recorded every 20 years. I have also been involved in two major bird translocations –bringing in juveniles birds then feeding them so that they form a new colony. One in Kaikoura which is the Hutton shearwaters. The other one was the Chatham Islands albatross in the Chatham Islands. Other bird translocations have involved catching saddlebacks and placing them on Blumine Island. And catching robins and trying to bring them to Kaipupu. Sadly the robins decided that they didn’t like Kaipupu! They took off. I also worked with black petrels on Great and Little Barrier islands.
Apart from that I have worked with frogs on Stephens Island. Although most birds don’t get to eat the frogs, there was a morepork sitting in the tree one time, and I thought ‘I hope he doesn’t spot where I place that frog!!’
The real passion came about after meeting Brian Bell, and him just nurturing us. He gave us so much information and showing us how amazing it was to become involved with birds. So really all this trapping is purely for the birds. I was asked in another interview how I felt about killing things. When I am saying I love creatures, I love nature and the birds. I hate the killing side of it but I have to weigh up whether it is the birds, or is it letting nature take its course, which is the other way people look at it. For me the birds win every time. It is no question. We want to have them back. Everybody loves the birds. The rats didn’t ask to be brought here, accidentally in some cases. They didn’t ask to become pests but we can’t really tolerate them. It is hard sometimes to think that you are actually killing something deliberately but as long as it is as humane as we can make it.
Where do you see the trapping in Ngakuta Bay going in the future?
Ask Neil! Recently we heard about the trapping in Momorangi Bay. We didn’t know that they had traps there. We heard that one volunteer was checking the traps every couple of weeks, but could no longer handle it by herself. So we decided to go around and just have a look. Neil, Norm Gourdie and I went around there. We had no idea that there was such a good set-up. We felt that we couldn’t just pull in the traps as Gail Honeycott had been advised. So we decided that we would try to help out – get some more volunteers and set the line up properly, with GPS and recordings on Trap NZ. (Trap NZ is another citizen science site for people to input for the ultimate use for research). The boxes were pretty old and some were not really best practice in the presence of wekas. We successfully applied for funding from a new grant, set up by Marlborough District Council. With this money we were able to buy a whole set of new traps. In May the Dawn Chorus Social Enterprise made us up new boxes to hold the traps. A few weeks later we had a working bee at Momorangi to lay them all out. Now there is a line of rat and stoat boxes, and possum traps.
So we see Pest Free Ngakuta Bay linking up with Momorangi which just expands the whole thing. To do the areas which are harder to reach we envisage using contractors to lay and service the traps. In those areas we will be using the possum traps and self-setting A24 traps which only require checking every few months. Because the way I look at it at the moment is that we have a little oasis in Ngakuta Bay, but as our bird numbers increase we have to give them somewhere to go. It is the opposite of Kaipupu Point where we made a halo around the peninsula so that the birds can come out of Kaipupu into Picton. But here we have almost created a little peninsula. The bay is well trapped so all our young birds here need somewhere to go. They are going to fly out of our trapped area to somewhere where there are rats. So we need to expand higher up into the hillsides around here.
The long term goal is that Picton Dawn Chorus is expanding from the Picton end, and should eventually link up with us here. Other trapping is being done around Mahikapawa and Anakiwa. Ultimately, if we can get more little groups going, actually we probably only need one more group - the Grove, and we would find most of the Grove Arm trapped. We keep finding other people who have bachs or residences down in other little bays. For example down in Kaireperepe Bay, there are apparently a whole lot of traps, and one of the Parker family members checks and records what has been caught. So there is other trapping going on that we are finding out about. It is happening but it is not all linked up. Anyway it all helps.
Since 2018 how many rats do you reckon you have caught?
I started in February 2017 and at the last count we had caught nearly 700 rats, 900 mice and 45 mustelids. When you think about it in that length of time it doesn’t sound like a lot, but then we are not a huge area. Because we have suppressed the numbers then hopefully the numbers are going down. In the first few years we were catching more. The interesting thing is that I am now getting reports from other people – I get text messages from people saying ‘I caught two possums’. There are a number of rats and possums actually being caught, not in our trap lines but in other miscellaneous ways – in the gardens, by people’s cats!! ‘My cat caught a rat’ – there are a few of those. There is actually over one hundred rats reported to me that were not from our trap lines – including some with our experimental tree traps as well. The number that I report to Trap NZ site is actually the trap lines, it is not the full number. This is also the number that I regularly update on the community notice board on the beach front to advertise what we are doing and to keep visitors and our community informed. Once we get over a thousand rats I think that will look a lot better! I don’t think that people really think about when it started, I think they just look at the number.
What do you see as the biggest challenges from now forward?
Volunteers – because we are all getting older.
The other challenge we have, is people’s attitude to cats. That is always the stumbling block for every group! So many of the general public will not accept that not all moggies are equal. Nor will they accept that ‘my cat does not catch birds’ is likely to be untrue. How do they know where their cat has been? It is now recognised that feral cats are probably doing more damage than the rats and mustelids. Australia is doing something about their cats. They are doing some pretty weird and wonderful things but at least they accept that feral cats are a pest that needs to be eradicated. It is sad because so many feral cats start out as abandoned animals. They didn’t ask for that and it is a horrible life. We have made cats into a domestic animal, not designed for the wilderness. Hmm! don’t get me started on cats.
To conclude, I really don’t know what I would be doing if I hadn’t started in on this! My whole existence at the moment is tied up in trapping – for the sake of the birds!
Transcript of talk by Dianne John (recorded by Sari Lewis) 2 June 2021
Can I ask you at this stage, because it is very obvious that you have all this bird knowledge, can you go back and just explain your involvement with birds.
How far back do you want?! There were a couple of little stories which started me off when I was a child. One of them was looking out of my bedroom window in winter. There was a tree with red berries and this amazing bird came to eat the berries. I called my mother. She didn’t know what it was, and we didn’t Google in those days! We finally found out that it was an unusual bird that sometimes travelled south from Scandanavia (and Britain was south). It was a Waxwing which was rarely seen in UK so I thought that was interesting. I don’t know how it started but I had these amazing posters of British birds in my room, and I just loved them. There was no background to my interest – my mother was interested in nature, but there was no real interest in birds. She developed an interest later in life when she was able to go on bird trips in her retirement. So she is very knowledgeable on birds now. The other story was that I was on holidays with my grandparents in Northern Ireland. Somebody had seen this rare bird, a chough. It is like a black bird but slightly bigger, with a red beak and red legs. It had been seen along the north coast. This man, a friend of my grandmother, turned up with his dog to look for this bird. I said ‘could I come too’. I think I was about nine. This man must have been really game to take me and my friend. He gave us this really stern lecture before we went. He said ‘now this dog is trained, and when I say ‘sit and be quiet’ the dog does just that! I expect you two to do the same!!’ Maybe he didn’t mean sit, but he certainly meant that we were to be quiet! So we tiptoed after him across all these paddocks. It was getting darker and darker. Anyway finally he spotted one of these choughs sitting on a rock. He was so excited about it that his excitement passed down to me. I’m not sure if it did to my friend, Jen. It gave me an example of how to bird watch and what is entailed. You don’t just go and see a bird. You have to actually work at it.
It didn’t really take off from there. I was always interested in birds and had a bird book handy where ever I went. But never really went birding as such, it was incidental sightings, and I would tick the box to say that I had seen that bird. When we came to Marlborough in 2001 we became members of Forest and Bird.
One of the speakers was a man called Brian Bell, one of NZ’s most amazing ornithologists. He said that the Ornithological Society of NZ had just established a branch in Marlborough. I said to Andrew that while Forest and Bird is fine, it was actually the birds I wanted! So we joined OSNZ and started doing things with them. I just continued to learn. I discovered that bird counting is something you should do. That it is all useful information for the future. So really it my passion about birds just grew from there. I can sit and watch birds all day. I do keep lists but I am more interested in doing something useful. Not just sitting watching the birds as in ticking boxes. I am much more interested in actually achieving something out of bird watching – as in numbers, behaviour, understanding what birds are actually doing.
Have you had an opportunity to do that in a scientific way?
With Picton Dawn Chorus and Kaipupu, I organise and do the annual bird counts which are then documented on the eBird register which is an international citizen-science data base. This is accessible by anybody who wants to do research about birds. I also record the bird counts onto the Bird Atlas which is another project where the presence or absence of birds, and bird numbers, is recorded every 20 years. I have also been involved in two major bird translocations –bringing in juveniles birds then feeding them so that they form a new colony. One in Kaikoura which is the Hutton shearwaters. The other one was the Chatham Islands albatross in the Chatham Islands. Other bird translocations have involved catching saddlebacks and placing them on Blumine Island. And catching robins and trying to bring them to Kaipupu. Sadly the robins decided that they didn’t like Kaipupu! They took off. I also worked with black petrels on Great and Little Barrier islands.
Apart from that I have worked with frogs on Stephens Island. Although most birds don’t get to eat the frogs, there was a morepork sitting in the tree one time, and I thought ‘I hope he doesn’t spot where I place that frog!!’
The real passion came about after meeting Brian Bell, and him just nurturing us. He gave us so much information and showing us how amazing it was to become involved with birds. So really all this trapping is purely for the birds. I was asked in another interview how I felt about killing things. When I am saying I love creatures, I love nature and the birds. I hate the killing side of it but I have to weigh up whether it is the birds, or is it letting nature take its course, which is the other way people look at it. For me the birds win every time. It is no question. We want to have them back. Everybody loves the birds. The rats didn’t ask to be brought here, accidentally in some cases. They didn’t ask to become pests but we can’t really tolerate them. It is hard sometimes to think that you are actually killing something deliberately but as long as it is as humane as we can make it.
Where do you see the trapping in Ngakuta Bay going in the future?
Ask Neil! Recently we heard about the trapping in Momorangi Bay. We didn’t know that they had traps there. We heard that one volunteer was checking the traps every couple of weeks, but could no longer handle it by herself. So we decided to go around and just have a look. Neil, Norm Gourdie and I went around there. We had no idea that there was such a good set-up. We felt that we couldn’t just pull in the traps as Gail Honeycott had been advised. So we decided that we would try to help out – get some more volunteers and set the line up properly, with GPS and recordings on Trap NZ. (Trap NZ is another citizen science site for people to input for the ultimate use for research). The boxes were pretty old and some were not really best practice in the presence of wekas. We successfully applied for funding from a new grant, set up by Marlborough District Council. With this money we were able to buy a whole set of new traps. In May the Dawn Chorus Social Enterprise made us up new boxes to hold the traps. A few weeks later we had a working bee at Momorangi to lay them all out. Now there is a line of rat and stoat boxes, and possum traps.
So we see Pest Free Ngakuta Bay linking up with Momorangi which just expands the whole thing. To do the areas which are harder to reach we envisage using contractors to lay and service the traps. In those areas we will be using the possum traps and self-setting A24 traps which only require checking every few months. Because the way I look at it at the moment is that we have a little oasis in Ngakuta Bay, but as our bird numbers increase we have to give them somewhere to go. It is the opposite of Kaipupu Point where we made a halo around the peninsula so that the birds can come out of Kaipupu into Picton. But here we have almost created a little peninsula. The bay is well trapped so all our young birds here need somewhere to go. They are going to fly out of our trapped area to somewhere where there are rats. So we need to expand higher up into the hillsides around here.
The long term goal is that Picton Dawn Chorus is expanding from the Picton end, and should eventually link up with us here. Other trapping is being done around Mahikapawa and Anakiwa. Ultimately, if we can get more little groups going, actually we probably only need one more group - the Grove, and we would find most of the Grove Arm trapped. We keep finding other people who have bachs or residences down in other little bays. For example down in Kaireperepe Bay, there are apparently a whole lot of traps, and one of the Parker family members checks and records what has been caught. So there is other trapping going on that we are finding out about. It is happening but it is not all linked up. Anyway it all helps.
Since 2018 how many rats do you reckon you have caught?
I started in February 2017 and at the last count we had caught nearly 700 rats, 900 mice and 45 mustelids. When you think about it in that length of time it doesn’t sound like a lot, but then we are not a huge area. Because we have suppressed the numbers then hopefully the numbers are going down. In the first few years we were catching more. The interesting thing is that I am now getting reports from other people – I get text messages from people saying ‘I caught two possums’. There are a number of rats and possums actually being caught, not in our trap lines but in other miscellaneous ways – in the gardens, by people’s cats!! ‘My cat caught a rat’ – there are a few of those. There is actually over one hundred rats reported to me that were not from our trap lines – including some with our experimental tree traps as well. The number that I report to Trap NZ site is actually the trap lines, it is not the full number. This is also the number that I regularly update on the community notice board on the beach front to advertise what we are doing and to keep visitors and our community informed. Once we get over a thousand rats I think that will look a lot better! I don’t think that people really think about when it started, I think they just look at the number.
What do you see as the biggest challenges from now forward?
Volunteers – because we are all getting older.
The other challenge we have, is people’s attitude to cats. That is always the stumbling block for every group! So many of the general public will not accept that not all moggies are equal. Nor will they accept that ‘my cat does not catch birds’ is likely to be untrue. How do they know where their cat has been? It is now recognised that feral cats are probably doing more damage than the rats and mustelids. Australia is doing something about their cats. They are doing some pretty weird and wonderful things but at least they accept that feral cats are a pest that needs to be eradicated. It is sad because so many feral cats start out as abandoned animals. They didn’t ask for that and it is a horrible life. We have made cats into a domestic animal, not designed for the wilderness. Hmm! don’t get me started on cats.
To conclude, I really don’t know what I would be doing if I hadn’t started in on this! My whole existence at the moment is tied up in trapping – for the sake of the birds!
Transcript of talk by Dianne John (recorded by Sari Lewis) 2 June 2021