Despite what you've been told..

All of these entries are backdated. I had my laptop with me but didn't have internet, so I was able to still blog but am just doing a mass post now. Enjoy!

Today is Day Zero of our Hochstetter’s frog field surveying. In the morning we left Ecoquest and headed out to a spot in the Hunua Ranges, not far from campus in the hills going towards Auckland. We met John Longden (my favorite part-time field leader, but don’t tell anyone!) there and after a quick briefing on general field preparation and the dividing up of tools, we headed off into the bush! After only 5 minutes of walking we encountered the first stream and rather than crossing it like the trail does, we followed it up stream. Most of the stream came up to just over the top of my boots but there were occasional pools near little waterfalls that went up to my knees. We went through the protocol of how to identify “frog habitat” which was basically what type of rocks to overturn and what objects were too small and not worthy of checking (we don’t look under small stones or under vegetative debris). Then we set off and spread out along the stream to practice looking for frogs and anyone who found one would call out to everyone, make a visual estimation within 5mm of how big they thought the frog was, and then actually measure it if they didn’t hop away.

We beat the all time record and found 19 frogs in that reach of stream in an hour. Most of them were between 20-30mm but we found one tiny that was only 7mm! It really shows that you need to develop a keen eye for this type of work. Afterwards we hiked up the stream a little farther, climbed a small waterfall and turned the corner to a huge waterfall that more of less flowed down a 60ft cliff. It was really cool and unexpected because it wasn’t as loud as your typical waterfall. We spent another hour or so going through the field exercises step-by-step and practiced how to take the measurements and all of that.

Now we’re at our “base camp” in Little Huia. It’s a cool cabin-type building looking over Manakau Harbor. We have a kitchen, bucks, and a big indoor porch like area with a full wall of windows looking over the water. Hills and a lot of sharp points that were probably Maori Pa sites surround us. For dinner we made pasta with tomato sauce, mushrooms, onions, and garlic with some asparagus on the side. On the road to Huia we bought some fresh strawberries, which made delicious dessert! It was so strange to have fresh strawberries in November!

Just a few minutes ago the 6 of us walked in from exploring the hills. There’s quite a lot of cleared land for pasture. We crested the biggest hill around here and were greeted by a random ropes course. It was a little ragged looking but we had fun with it and used some of the huge swings and climbed up the structures for some stellar views. Now I’m sitting on the porch watching the sunset over the hills and the harbor. It’s gonna be a good week.