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Spring is well and truely under way. Longer days, warmer sunshine to help melt away the memories of a few frosty winter mornings and birds chirping all over the place. The prolific harakeke flowers are luring in every tūī in the neighbourhood and the puawānanga/clematis is shining bright above the canopy.

Kākāriki/redcrowned parakeets have finally arrived to Medlands for more than a fleeting visit. We have been hoping this would happen for ages and we now seem to have a pair of these endemic parrots that have decided they feel safe enough here to move down island from Okiwi and surrounds. Redcrowned kākāriki have a conservation status of ‘relict’ and we should all feel honoured and privileged to be able to hear and see them outside of a fenced sanctuary or pest free island.

This pair have picked a great spot to settle, on a property where planting and pest control has been carried out for decades, mature trees are abundant providing both a home (a hollow in a tree) and plenty of food to sustain a wee chattering family. They are fairly easy to spot around the neighbourhood because if you keep your ears open you will hear them before you see them. Their chattering in flight is so distinctive and different to the rest of the soundscape. Click here to hear that characteristic sound and sharpen your ears when out and about in Medlands.

If you do notice them we would love to know where and when you spotted these emerald green Taonga.

We are super grateful to Beth Daly from Okiwi Community Ecology Project who paid us a visit to pass on lots of expert advice and tips to create the best possible home for the kākāriki. She is a wealth of knowledge and we learnt a lot about becoming kākāriki carers in just a morning.

Join our pest control extension

OME has been trapping in the dunes, reserves and wetland since 2019.

We are now off and racing with the expansion and would love to help you tackle the rodents on your property.

The price starts from $200 per year for a standard quarter acre and will go up depending on how long your set-up takes to check. We are able to offer traps and/or bait, we just want as many people as possible to be part of our pest control project for maximum results.

If you would like regular pest control taken care of by our small, trustworthy and dedicated team or you would like some more information please get in touch.

We can also supply tools for you to carry out your own pest control if you prefer. The key is to be part of the bigger picture and have some form of control carried out on a regular basis. If Murray Staples is taking care of your local rodent population that is good for us to know too, though he might be keen to scale back in the long term.

Meet the team

Isobel Edwards and Maxine Barrowman are our trusted team members.

They each bring something different to their work for OME and complement each other well with their varied knowledge base.

Isobel has been working part time for OME for almost a year now, as well as working for Envirokiwi. She has amazing knowledge about all the Pest Plants on Aotea and can tell an Argentine ant from any old ant, a very useful skill most of the rest of us have not mastered! She has earned a Bachelors in Environmental Management prior to joining OME and is now filling in the rest of her week as Ecology Vision Facilitator. She is also a dab hand at designing posters and helps out with updating various documents.

Maxine has just joined the team for two days a week. She has 3 years experience from Windy Hill Sanctuary and has, whilst working there, taught herself an incredible amount about native trees and plants. She is like a walking, talking field guide to NZ native trees and shrubs. Her Windy Hill experience has taught her what it takes to deliver regular, sustained pest control. She is a podiatrist by trade but has put that on hold in favour of an outdoor life for now.

These girls are the A-team and will be responsible and respectful of your property if you decide to join the regular pest control programme.

Of course Lotte might also pop in now and then, most of you hopefully know her already.

Above is the new map of proposed rat devices within the OME Phase Two area. All 3540 of them!! Pretty impressive, right?

The green and blue dots are active pest control stations, yellow are proposed.

Of course we won’t be able to access all the private properties, but just imagine if most of us got on board. It would do an awesome job of suppressing the rodents in our catchment to much more acceptable densities than the current 85% in the mature bush areas!

Enviroschool

OME has recently begun a relationship with the Enviroschool Students at Kaitoke School. The first thing we did together was a special planting day in the wetland where we talked about plant species and why we have chosen certain trees, why we are restoring this area, who lives there and how important it is that we all take ownership of this piece of public conservation land.

Those kids are already so knowledgeable about the natural world surrounding them and it was so much fun getting to know them. We really look forward to building this connection and learning from each other.

Ahu Moana

Glenn Edney is an Ocean Ecologist who was one of the speakers at last year’s Ecology Festival here on Aotea. Glenn has a gentle, holistic approach to understanding the moana and he is going to share some of his wisdom with us here in Medlands on October 18th (time and date to be confirmed)in the St John’s Church community room. Glenn will talk us through the Ahu Moana project and how you can be involved.

The Ahu Moana team have already been monitoring in Schooner Bay and Katherine Bay twice a year and from this October Medlands will be included in the underwater surveys. We will be getting in the water on the weekend of 19-20th of October, weather dependant. This gentle monitoring method allows us to keep and eye on the general health of this ecosystem and note down any changes we might notice to form a picture of what is going on below the surface over time.

If you would like to help out, please get in touch.

Please note, there is an alternative date of 1st of November for the talk and 2-3 for the snorkel in case the weather is not favourable for the first dates. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for up to date information.

Pest Plant Amnesty

Are you planning to spend Labour Weekend getting your garden tidied up for summer?

Together we can battle the weeds!

OME and Auckland Council are putting on another Pest Plant Amnesty where you can get rid of your pest plants FREE of charge.

We will have a bin parked by the OME Eco-Hub for a few hours on Sunday the 27th of October from 1-3pm.

We will have big garden waste bags you can borrow on the day to minimise spreading seeds on the way to the bin. Various tools and cut and paste will be available to borrow too.

You can bring your pest plants here and drop them straight in the bin. The idea is to encourage everyone to dispose of their garden waste, pest plants in particular, responsibly to stop the spread of some of the worst weeds we have. Below is a list of some of the most common weeds OME deals with in our restoration work and these will be the focus of this Amnesty.

Our local Auckland Council office has an iNaturalist site where you can report weeds on their High Risk list and they can then come and remove them for free for you.

Bittern Count 2024

Have you ever heard a bittern boom?

It is an oddly eerie, deep and hollow sound. Unmistakable unless a cow is in distress nearby or an Aussie is playing his didgeridoo.

On October 19th 2024 bird nerds all over Aotearoa are going out to listen for Bittern Booming in the first ever annual combined Matuku Muster. Here on Aotea we had a head start with several counts some years back and another more recent organised event last year. John Ogden wrote a short report on last year’s findings which can be found on the OME website.

With a total number of these birds left in New Zealand possibly as low as 700, lots of people are interested in helping the bittern flourish. You can help by voting for them in Forest and Bird’s Bird of the Year competition if you haven’t already.

They are not particularly road savvy and, mainly due to their size, don’t take off as speedily as they should with the habit of hanging out on, or very near, the roadsides. Mind you, they are pretty hard to miss when trying to ‘blend in’ like in the below photo. Amongst tall raupō they have a much better chance at going unnoticed.

We will replicate last year’s listening template and have people listening in the same 16 wetland spots across Aotea. We will keep you posted on what we find, hopefully we will notice an increase over time.

We are still keen to hear about any sightings and just loooove to see images of beautiful bittern from anywhere on Aotea.

We hope you are able to join us for some of the events we are planning over the next few months.

See you out and about soon.

Kind regards

The OME team