Another rat - Video. 27th October

Kari's video about rat trapping

The positive effects of our trapping programme! By Chelsea Traill

 The Junior group of the wetland team checking a rat trap. 

 
Measuring and sexing for data recording.

The Hurupaki wetland enviro team has made a lot of progress in making our wetland improve with our wild life. Now that the warmer seasons have come,we have caught three rats in two days and two possums also in two days. We were also lucky to spot eight little ducklings swimming with their mother in the pond.

By Chelsea Traill

Mother Duck and her eight ducklings. 

OUR FIRST POSSUM!!

We caught our first possum today in the wetland.  Miss Tyson had to work hard to get it out of the trap because it's teeth were clenched around the bar.
It was a girl and she was 76cm long.  Thank you for the traps, Mr Henderson.

The planting of our butterfly garden continues

We are slowly filling up the space in our Butterfly garden.

 

Splitting native grasses with Jacque

On the 22nd September Jacque Knight came to show us how to split native grasses.  Jacque is an Enviroschools facilitator, who grows many rare species of native plants and trees.  She has kindly donated the grasses for us to plant around our wetland.

Our new bridge!

A big thank you to Mr Darwent for building our new bridge in the Wetlands this week, and to Northland Regional Council for the funds to purchase the materials.

 

This bridge has been built over the top of the old one which had become unstable and therefore unsafe to use. We can now continue to explore our wetland safely. 

Mosaic stepping stones 26th August

Turning the once lacklustre gardens behind Pod 13 and 11 into a new, vibrant habitat for bees and butterflies continues, with mosaic stepping stones. These will become steps which will hopefully encourage everyone to stay off the garden itself, protecting the delicate plants.

We created patterns with broken tiles and glass beads in the bottom of our trays, before mixing and pouring quick setting cement over the top.

 Tane mixing the cement.

Anya's turn                                                          We turn up for enviro rain, hail, or shine.

 

Planting in our Butterfly garden continues......

 A huge thanks to Jaqueline Knight for donating native hebe, hibiscus, and a rare species of kakabeak which we have planted in the native area of our bee and butterfly garden. Taylor, Gemma and Anya did a great job of planting while the boys were busy on the wheelbarrow, shifting mulch.  They kept Toby very busy as he had the job of raking it out.

  

  

Wetland reflection

Planting our butterfly garden 5th July

Today we planted our Paper for Trees trees in our new butterfly garden.  This is the beginning of our planting which we will continue after the holidays.

LEARNZ NZ Garden Bird Survey 27th June

On Tuesday we participated in the LEARNZ NZ Garden bird survey.  We entered our data about the bird species we identified in the school grounds and their numbers, onto a national database.

In the lead up to the survey we have been learning about native and introduced bird species and learning about the different ways to classify them such as herbivores, omnivores or insectivores, waders, shore birds, urban, bush or sub-alpine birds.  We have participated in a virtual field trip to Christchurch with the LEARNZ field trip teacher, Shelley.

Rat identification

We have been using DOCs Guide to to the identification and collection of New Zealand rodents by D.M Cunningham and P.J Moors to identify our rats.

Rat data

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/11vGhmNRSK6g2SxBDtEoV-H6MV-F-f7SFoRL8SsENZno/edit?usp=sharing

 

Our first rat!! 27th May

Within two days of setting the traps we have caught our first rat.  Miss Tyson bet us $5 each that it would be the trap next to the bamboo and she was right! We have recorded the data on our new google doc table and are learning to re-set the traps carefully.

 

Keira-Lee, Reanna and Rudy collecting our first rat - A ship rat.
No fear!!