Otatara School Bioblitz – Day 1
Six classes from Otatara School visited the Community Nursery on Monday 9th December, to do a Bioblitz!
The aim of a bioblitz is to find as many different species as possible of animal, plant and fungi in an area. Students searched three different areas of the Rances property – the Kahikatea forest, the pond and restoration area and the paddock.
Bronwyn Graham had organised the event, getting experts to help – Pat Hoffman (pond), Jesse Bythell (Restoration Area), Mark Oster and Walter (Bush) and Lloyd Esler (Paddock). Bronwyn and Chris based themselves in the Education Centre at “Base Camp” – where students could bring back any specimens they wanted to look at in more detail with magnifying glasses and using the resources in the Centre. Specimens of living creatures were identified, classified (put into groups), recorded and displayed. We discussed what lives where in what environment.
The day was a flurry of excitement and activity – students used lots of ways to explore the different habitats with nets (for flying insects), spades for soil organisms, pond nets, tracking tunnels and pitfall traps set up overnight, and using their senses – looking, listening and touching.
Some of the finds were as follows: Pond – koura (freshwater crayfish), tadpole, damselfly nymph, freshwater mites, back-swimmers. Restoration Area – lots of different plants, spiders, cockroach, unidentified caterpillars. One tracking tunnel had large scratchmarks (but no footprints) and the peanut butter bait had gone! A tui was drinking sugarwater from a flax flower at the pond and small ducklings were on the pond.
In the bush lots of ferns were found including hounds tongue fern, prickly shield fern and hen and chicken fern with its “baby” ferns attached. Some fungi, spiders and hoppers were found. The bush tracking tunnels didn’t have any tracks in them meaning the Rances are doing a good job on their pest control! One mammal was found though - a mouse in a pitfall trap! Piwakawaka (fantails) followed some groups and tui and bellbirds could be heard singing in the treetops.
In the paddock, as the day dried out more flying insects were observed and some caught – moths, flies and other winged insects, different grasses were collected including “Yorkshire fog” and a kereru and kahu (Harrier) was seen flying over. Soil organisms included flatworms, grubs, centipedes and beetles and ants. The top find in the paddock alongside Lloyd Esler was a false scorpion. They are very common but pretty secretive so it was great to find one. They go around ripping mites to pieces.
Some of the insects were hard to identify so students were encouraged to use the internet resource I-Naturalist - https://inaturalist.nz/ back at school and to send photos of the creatures they find so that experts around New Zealand could help to identify them.
A very busy and exciting day, thanks to all the helpers, teachers, parents and students.
Chris and Bronwyn
Posted: 11 December 2019