Here's a Weka

Here's a Weka - typically it'd gone by the time I got my phone out

A Clip at the feeder

A couple of feeders have been put up for Stitchbirds - they've been finding it difficult to establish because while there's plenty of nector to drink, the Tui's and Bellbirds are aggressivley territorial and have bullied them. There's only males in this shot - the females are on nests at the moment. Saw a couple of Bellbirds too but maybe with five male Stitchbirds there they decided to hang back.

kiwi

The trip in the kapiti island

We went to the kapiti island by boat.

The kapiti island is very nice and fresh. The island environment is very good.There are a lot of trees and different kinds of birds. It is difficult to climb the hill because it rained
yesterday. So it is really wet .We photographed a lot of pictures of birds on the road. Those birds are nice and cute.





It took us two hours to reach the summit.We are tried and hungry.But the landscape  is nice.We can see the clouds and the sea.

Went to Kāpiti Island yesterday

Superb day (after a week of blurk weather) - 15 students and five adults. Typically, I didn't take any photos of the island - we saw Te Rauparaha's island that he usually chose to live on too.

Getting the talk about conservation on the island - we heard and saw some Saddlebacks - Tieke. This was cool as I'd never seen them. They've only been able to live there since the rats were eliminated as they tend to try to make friends with them (and then get eaten)

Visitors shelter

In the visitors shelter - got a good taste of what to be looking for as we went up to the top.

At the top - Tuteremoana peak. A stiff 501 m, climb, took about 1 hour 20. Not a bad effort.

We'd seen Saddleback. Wekas, Kākāriki, Kākā, Bellbirds, Tui and heard Tomtits

Just been trying to put a couple of video clips in of Stitchbrids and a Weka but the technology is too smart for me

Looking out the lookout

Lookout again

First ever trip to Kapiti Island

What a wonderful day! Kapiti Island lived up to all my expectations and I just loved the wonderful bird life and bird song that surrounded us all day. The view from Tuteremoana was incredible and I'm so grateful that we got to experience this day. Thanks everyone for your great participation.

history of kapiti island

30/11/2016

Pre-1840 New Zealand attracted a polyglot mix of adventurers and entrepreneurs, the sealers, whalers, stowaways and their Maori agents forming what historical geographer Alan Grey called a ‘robber economy’. The early industries, sex excluded, were extractive: flax, timber, seals and most important of all, whales. Pelagic or ocean whalers entered the Bay of Islands from the early 1800s. Shore whaling began 20 years later and mostly happened further south, around Cook Strait and the along the east coast of the South Island.

These European ships drew Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha to Kapiti Island. His tribe had fared badly in the Musket Wars but the treacherous and violent Te Rauparaha was also very intelligent and adaptable, a true cultural border-crosser. He knew that the European ships passing through Cook Strait were the key to getting trade goods such as guns. In 1823 Ngāti Toa seized Kapiti Island, which they defended next year in the bloody Battle of Waiorua. Kapiti, centre of a canoe-crafted empire, gave Te Rauparaha both a fortress and a trading base.

Vessels began calling in 1827 and, by the time the trade peaked in the mid-1830s, there were five whaling stations on the island: Waiorua, Rangatira, Taepiro, Wharekohu and Te Kahe Te Rau O Te Rangi. Te Rauparaha encouraged traders and whalers, providing land, houses, pigs, potatoes, dressed flax and women in return for guns, tobacco and alcohol. Island historian Chris Maclean describes 1830s Kapiti as ‘a wild frontier, a meeting point of two cultures without the restraints of laws or government’ but, despite occasional acts of thuggery, two cultures united in greed got along surprisingly well. Europeans and Māori lived side by side and trader and whaler John Niccol followed age-old practice by marrying into the local real estate, wedding Kahe Te Rau O Te Rangi, daughter of Ngāti Toa chief Te Matoha.

The whaling trade faded away in the 1840s and Te Rauparaha, his influence waning, moved back to the mainland. Whalers and Te Rauparaha are just part of Kapiti’s history. It has also been a farm and a pioneering site for conservation. The government acquired most of it in 1897 and Richard Henry, whom we will meet in entry 69, was one of the earliest keepers. Now predator-free, Kapiti is an important bird sanctuary. Nature is reclaiming the village site, but boats take visitors out to Kapiti and at Te Kahe Te Rau O Te Rangi you can still see terraces, a stand for a trypot (in which whale blubber was rendered down) and the grave of a whaler, as well as Māori middens.