55 Year 5 students from Otatara School Rooms 8 and 9, came out to the nursery for the day on Wednesday 29th March. They were studying “invertebrates” or minibeasts and Bronwyn and Chris had put together a programme of activities for the day. The group was divided into four “habitat” groups – the Bush, the pond area, the garden and the education centre building, and paddock. Each group looked for bugs in two of the four habitats, for an hour each. The Bush group was led by Lloyd Esler and lots of rotting logs were examined for huhu grubs and ground beetles, spiderwebs were looked into and fantails accompanied this group – feasting on the bugs disturbed along the way!
The Garden group was led by Chris and started with sheetweb spiders in the nursery beds, then at the worm farm counting and estimating how many worms were in there doing their recycling, then under logs finding ground beetles, earwigs, slaters etc and a case moth in the blueberry cage. Bees were slow to get going on the flowers as we started in mist! Pitfall traps, weta motels and tracking tunnels were all examined as ways to detect which insects may live in your patch.
Bronwyn led the pond group who pulled out nets containing backswimmers, damselflies were seen and lots of nursery spider webs. The lifecycles of damsel flies were looked at, noting in particular that different stages are spent in different habitats (in the water, flying!)
At the Education Centre a huhu beetle was the first capture – Chris had used the Centre as a huge “light trap” by leaving the lights on and the windows open all night – a host of night flying moths and other insects had flown in! Previously, an insect scientist – an entomologist – had captured 74 different moth species using a light trap at Rances. The Education Centre group had also studied insect life cycles and food webs.
After lunch there was a run round the koru in the paddock before sitting in the building to examine all the insects caught in the morning and reporting back on the different finds. The students used their recently learnt scientific drawing skills to record the minibeasts found in the various habitats of the Southland Community Nursery. Mr Esler is an expert on minibeasts and could tell us all lots about their lifecycles and about special characteristics each insect had. “There would be no life on earth without insects” he said. Lots of good questions were asked. Thanks to Gillian Donelly and Jena Young for bringing out a great group of budding entomologists!
Natural Body Products - that’s the next workshop to be held at the Community Nursery on Saturday 22nd April 2017. Honorlea Mangion has a business “Kakariki Beauty Products” and she will hold a workshop every month this year at the Education Centre. In this April workshop you will make and take home Lip Balm, Bath Salts, Salt scrub, Massage/moisturising bar and benefit from Honorlea’ experience as a Cosmetic Formulation Chemist, so you will also find out all the science behind the products.
The workshop 9.30am-2.30pm will cost just $50 – it is being sponsored by the Community Nursery thanks to an ILT Foundation grant. Those who have done previous workshops have been thrilled by Honorlea’s generosity with knowledge and her bubbly personality. It is great fun as well as being able to take home some lovely products. These workshops can also be a networking opportunity – maybe a corporate workshop or book one for a group of friends, or a local community get-together. Bookings are essential email Honorlea at
A Kindergarten “family night” was a first for the Community Nursery. Waikiwi families came along with their fish and chip dinners at 5.30pm. After the food and some play in the education centre everyone went for a scavenger hunt around the pond with Chris. We were met by Donna the duck and her family and then accompanied by piwakawaka all along the track as we used our senses to find various interesting prickly, smooth, coloured, sweet smelling plants around the pond track. We finished with a run around the newly mowed koru in the paddock.
The rainy weather didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the budding nature photographers on Sunday 26 March 2017. Wynston Cooper and Dawn Patterson gave their expertise, experience and photographic tips on the big screen and out in the field around the pond at Rances. An illustrated presentation explaining the basics of “F stops”, “aperture”, “depth of field”, ”shutter speeds” and “white balance” was given before participants took their cameras out into the field. After taking photos with guidance from Dawn and Wynston, each participant downloaded some of their digital images to be discussed by the group and all went away with ideas and more confidence in operating their cameras. It was a very productive and enjoyable workshop and another “first” for the Community Nursery.
From the Southland Community Nursery we wandered past the pond and through plantings. We first stopped to collect some seed from the mingimingi (Coprosma propinqua) finding the little blue berries in the tangly shrubs. We also spotted nursery web spider webs, manuka seed pods, and both the green and ready and open seed pods of Kohuhu (Pittosporum tenufolium). It was great to talk about how we can collect seed to grow a forest.
We made our way to Bushy Point stopping to see how the plants we are planting as part of the Eco Challenge Days (joint KCC and Otatara Landcare Group events) are growing. A great way for us as KCC to be involved in growing a forest. Liam found his tree planted December 2015 which started out at 43 cm and is now 128 cm! We made it to the pond at Bushy Point and set up base to explore from. Russel caught a cicada for us to have a close up look at, we heard and spotted a rare fernbird, made boats (that we sailed on the pond back at the Southland Community Nursery), started a nature journal, used books to find out about species found in this area, and watched a kereru drink water from the pond – extraodinary! On the way back we saw kakariki flying over the bush at Rances.
