Feigned Lament

As the days creep towards a time when I will once again stand in your presence, I have been subject to the waning days of sunlight and brisk evening air indicative of fall. I am plunged head first into a research project that would still be left partially unanswered should I have six months of time to work. But do not send remorseful thoughts down my way. Instead be mindful of the joyous occasions and memories that have become so frequent in my mind, the thoughts of home. Thoughts better explained by the people within those thoughts, the people that I love, the same people that I left in order to go exploring. I came searching for an education, perhaps an opportunity to find the good in the world and a part of myself. The personal reflection I have entered has given me insight into my explanations of unworldly things, which each of us attempt to answer within ourselves. These answers have confirmed my outwardly goals aimed ultimately at the target of happiness of myself and others, just finely calibrated for the opposing gale that is the social and environmental injustice wrought ubiquitously throughout the world . These winds cause millions of people to remain indifferent to the notions that millions more are just ignorant towards, blind to the suffering of others for their own comforts. I have pulled back on this bow of goals with the strength of all of you who complete my thoughts, my explanations, my drive to make change and to shortly return home for a while. The energy in my soul has dimmed to a faint simmer of reason. By this cause and many others, which I may have just explained, I look forward to regaining my vibrancy when we meet again. My love for you all transcends space and time.

A few good pictures to counter the lament...

Sect. 3.3: Invertebrate sorting and identification

The dry lab at EcoQuest Field Centre in Whakatiwai was used for the sorting and identification of invertebrates collected in the pitfall traps. First, debris was removed from the invertebrates by sifting the contents of the trap through a 1 mm screen and using forceps for further separation. The specimens were preserved in a 70% ethanol solution in a sealable plastic container. Coleoptera and Orthoptera > 3mm in length were further separated and identified to family with verification by Dr. Peter Maddison. Those individuals were then measured using a caliper to the nearest tenth of a millimeter.

These few simple sentences from the methods section of my research report describe almost an entire week of work for myself and the invertebrate team. It doesn’t sound like much, but with the consideration that 96 pitfall traps had to be sorted, identified, and measured, it truly is a bit of work. It was meticulous, but each individual beetle and weta could potentially mean a great deal to our findings. So far we have received the preliminary results, which indicate a difference in beetle abundance between the mountains and in Carabid (the predatory beetle family) size distribution between higher and lower elevations on the mountains. This is very interesting as it has significant implications for my discussion on microhabitats.

The highlight of this time in the lab was meeting Dr. Peter Maddison. Dr. Pete is a professional entomologist, former president of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, who confirmed our sorting of beetles and facilitated the discussion of possible results and further investigation. We may have collected a new species of beetle in the Ptilodactylidae family!! Dr. Pete has a few claims to fame. He MCed a party for a club back in England in the mid-60s, featuring The Beatles. There, he got to sing a few songs with them and hear what he reports was the debut of “Hey Jude.” He has also supplied a number of invertebrates for feature films, most notably "Arachnophobia" and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (recall the centipede that crawls over Frodo when he is tangled in the spider’s web).

We all got a bit crazy!!!



Well, I am now just doing a bunch of reading and writing in order to get my DRP report to the best condition. You have all been in my thoughts. See you sooner than yesterday.

Harvesting from the Firth

You may be expecting a long meticulous description of my few days sorting bugs in the lab, but although that endeavor was complete on Friday I will spare you momentarily from the account of those gruesome days spend crouched over a microscope. Instead, I have skipped ahead to this weekend, which was well deserved time-off. Saturday was truly a day of rest. I slept in until 9:30. Yep, that is sleeping in these days. I cooked myself a freedom-toast breakfast. I worked on some bone carving and just shared some nice conversations with friends. The evening was warmed by the first campfire since the draught. Good times.

This morning I woke and headed next door to Brian and Beryl’s house with Max and Tom. After waiting out the morning winds, we headed out into the Firth of Thames for a little fishing. Some rough waters greeted us on the trip out to the 27 m line, the local fishing hotspot. We got a few fish there, including my first Snapper about 20 cm long, nice fish. After a bit of a lull, we hit up the mussel beds and made our day there. All said and done we caught 17 snapper and 5 kahawai, or cow-eye of legal limit; that is over ten pounds of fish once filleted.



It was such a great day out on the water and such a wonderfully delicious feed after a day of work.

Stayed tuned for the academic stuff, which is sure to consume most of my waking hours in the last few weeks of the program. Hopefully I will have time to experience another weekend excursion before my time is up.

Always Field Ready

Ever since our first trip to the Coromandel, which put us out in New Zealand bush for the first time, we were preached at to always be prepared for four seasons of weather in one day. But as you might remember, I have been in one of New Zealand’s longest droughts in its recorded history. Four months of no rain seems like nothing, but it has been enough to reek havoc on the lately booming economy of dairy. The cows are starving and most of them aren’t milking because of the stress. But how does this relate to my four days out in the field this weekend for the beginning of my directed research project (DRP). Well, Monday the drought was broken and I was still collecting invertebrates.

But let me explain what I was doing in the bush, before I start telling stories about climbing a mountain in heavy rains. The objective of my research is to determine if the assemblage of invertebrate communities may be a result of differing pest control regimes between two mountains, Maungatautari and Pirongia. I will also explore the effects of microhabitat on those assemblages. That means I’m looking at what kinds of bugs are associated with the conditions of each plot we encountered: vegetation, slope, dead stuff around the area, etc. More specifically we are interested in the order Coleoptera, or beetles. We are the “Buggers:” Amy, Danny, Emily, field leader Jilanna and myself, Zack.


Left to Right: Jilanna, Dan, Amy, Emily

Each mountain had two tracks with four transects cut from the tracks into the bush, two arbitrarily designated as upper and two as lower altitudes. A transect is a compass bearing that is followed from a designated point, marked on the track. Six plots were established on each transect with a pitfall trap set up for the last month collecting ground dwelling invertebrates that should happen along the hole in the ground. They have been preserved since falling in a solution of ethylene glycol, water, and a bit of dish detergent to relieve the surface tension. Yes, bugs were killed in the name of science, but the number trapped is a small fraction to the population existing on the mountains. At each plot the pitfall trap was collected and a four-meter square quadrat was placed around the trap in which the microhabitat assessment (my job) was conducted. So being out in the field for four days had us tramping 1.5 – 2 hours up a mountain to the topmost transect. We hit the four transects from each track on the walk back down, lasting about 5 – 6 hours all said and done.

We stayed in bunked cabins at the Roadrunner Motel, more precisely a car park in Te Awamutu. It wasn’t exactly an exciting place to stay, but by dark when we got back there after a day in the field all the accommodation that was necessary was a kitchen for dinner and a bed.

So by process of elimination most of the excitement happened out on the mountains. Friday after coming out of the bush at Maungatautari, we had a bit of time to kill before the “Veggies” were finished with their work for the day. So Jilanna, our field leader for the week, took us to an external enclosure supporting the translocation of native birds. Two takahe and a kiwi with a misformed beak are being cared for there. Jilana is an ex-EcoQuester who is now a permanent resident in New Zealand. She is currently conducting her master’s research of kiwi behaviors on Maugatautari. She also worked for the Maugatautari Ecological Island Trust, and knew the woman with the key to the enclosure.



A group of us also returned to Maungatautari Saturday night for a hike in the dark. We were able to hear a male kiwi and a handful of morepork, a New Zealand owl. Of course a bit of russling from wetas, were heard. Wetas, in the order, Orthoptera, are target species for the invertebrate survey. We got to see some of them on the X-cluder fence, along with a forest gecko. It looks like a baby crocodile. When it opens it’s mouth to lick it’s nostrils, it reveals an orange mouth.



However, not all waking hours were spent in the bush. Jilanna welcomed a group of us into her home for Sunday’s dinner. Her partner, Bruce, a plant ecologist, gave us a hand that day, and was a special addition to discussion along the track and at the dinner table. Sitting around a dinner table was something else. It was a soothing reminder of the comforts from home. Having been dropped back to the Roadrunner motel that was the last I would see of Jilanna dry.

Monday, all the farmers and rural homeowners with water tanks breathed a sign of relief. Saying the draught was broken in reference to the rain can only be a tribute to how dry it was. In two days, more than 9 cm of water fell on the North Island. I had to be ready in order to be out in the field for a full day’s work, the reason you must always be field ready. The first track of the day will have me telling stories of “Transect PRU2” for a long time. The bearing put us out 100 m on an average of 30 degrees down the mountain. Set your treadmill at that and walk it for 10 minutes. Better yet, pour water on it and see how long you can stay standing. The white square in the picture is the roof of the pitfall trap and is about 2 m directly below me. The picture is blurry because I had to keep it in a zip-lock bag to stay dry. It was so much fun, no joke. I haven’t played in the mud in a long time. But we almost lost Amy and Dan a few times. Let’s just say Dan used to hate supplejack. The cherry on top was getting to see the tallest moss in the world on the way off the transect. If you can't make out the picture, you'll have to just believe me.



We were fortunate to be coming out of the bush on Monday. Back at EcoQuest campus, lab work is in progress. A more detailed account thereof is forthcoming. It is after midnight now and I have a full day ahead of me tomorrow of sorting out the families of Coleoptera of individuals greater than 3mm. It is about 8am in the States, but I will say good night anyways. Good night!

Hunting and Gathering

Although my life has slowed down a bit in the last few weeks, while back in Kaiaua, it seems as though I am still experiencing just as many exciting things. Two weeks ago, while I was writing about the South Island experience, I was studying in one of the only Chenier Plains in the world. Shells are broken down and deposited in ridgelines creating shell banks. Sedimentation from terrestrial run-off fills in the mounds and creates new land. This is how Miranda, an internationally recognized shorebird sanctuary, and Kaiaua was formed. We counted 45 species of birds in just a few days; all of this, in my very own backyard.

That weekend, I was fortunate enough to meet with our chef, Rhonda, to go mussel hunting. She is such a hip lady and was so excited to take myself and my friend Amy out of Higgins’s beach to show us the natural treasures of Kaiaua. The tide didn’t agree with us to get mussels, but we were able to gather a feed of rock oysters anyhow. They were so delicious and it was very refreshing to feel directly connected to my food, earning it with my cuts and scrapes. We deep fried them and had double-battered oysters for dinner with kumara chips (something like sweet potato fries).

This week was spent mostly in the classroom learning about ecological restoration and working on a few papers due today. Yes, there are academic requirements at EcoQuest. We even had a 1.5 hr quiz and 3.5 hr exam since I posted last. However, Wednesday, was spent at the stream adjacent to campus. This area has been overrun with invasive species and has altered the ecosystem. So the lot of us began pulling weeds, chopping trees, scarfing grass, and cutting bamboo. It was very gratifying to see your accomplishments at the end of the day. And like the frost flats overwrought with the pine trees, you begin to hate the very species that have beautified your backyard.

Anyways, I am currently attempting to build a shelter with the bamboo that was collected. However, the bamboo, ground, and wasps are not cooperating. We’ll see if it ever gets done. It is worthwhile trying to use as much of the resource gathered in clearing the stream banks. Not everything you think is waste has lost all of its usefulness.

We also took a trip to the mainland island of Maungatautari. This mountain has a fence around it specially designed to exclude all mammalian predators, which were introduced by humans to New Zealand. The forest composition in this regenerating forest is magical. This is where I will be doing some of my research on invertebrates, to be explored further in another post. One of the highlights is pictures, a giant weta consumed from the inside by some sort of fungus. Cool, eh!?! Also, on the way to the mountain we passed through Matamata, or has you would better know it, Hobbiton. It is amazing to see the pop culture influence of the west on New Zealand.

Next on the docket is the directed research project. Much more about this is comming as I begin data collection in the field and lab work sorting it out. The details that I uncover may not be entirely interesting to everyone, but I may include it just to sound intelligent.

I am in the last stretch and sufficiently miss you all. Stay well, at least until I get back.