Drone over Mt Chocolate

Mt Chocolate was filmed using a drone at 2pm, 23 March 2018.

The drone was flown by a friend of a neighbour. Thank you, mystery pilot, whoever you are.

Cake Week Begins

Edinburgh has Fringe festival, Wellington has Wearable Arts and Mt Chocolate has Cake Week.

Each year from April 4, celebrate all birthdays by eating loads of cake.

Family. friends and neighbours, invite yourself for a bit. Cakes have been known to go visiting. You can even bring more cake to add to the week's fun.

Last year so much cake arrived that Cake Week turned into Cake Month.

Cake Week 2019 Begins

Cake Week 2019

And more cake arrived

We went to 2 cake enhanced events during the week which remain unrecorded but were massive.

And more cake kept arriving at home on Sunday.

 And then some more cake on Sunday

Then there was more cake with cream but it got eaten and the camera got forgotten. Thanks, Lesley and Martin.

The Steve & Rachel friends look blurry but the cake wasn't on Sunday evening.

Cake Week 2019 Results

• We started with 2 cakes
• Family and friends arrived with 5 cakes
• All eaten

What Drives Forest Regeneration

A native plant restoration workshop attended by 70 people was held on Friday at the Invercargill Working Men's Club in the morning. A trip out to Otatara Community Nursery followed in the afternoon.

There is a report here.

I went to the workshop and learned a great deal about some very interesting trials and experiments underway around NZ to find faster and cheaper ways to get native ecosystems established. It was the best workshop/bus trip/field day I've been to since moving to Southland in 2014. It had a lot of meat in it. Hopefully, there will be more like this in future.

• Dr Brian Rance of DOC gave a talk on "Right Plant Right Place"
• The highlight for me was a talk by Dr Kiri Joy Wallace, a scientist from Waikato University. Here is a link to a PDF of her presentation.
• There is more information available about the People Cities Nature research programme at Waikato University.
• DoC is also experimenting with direct drilling of seed

Her talk asked the right questions and is based on a monitoring programme of 20m x 10m plots around NZ measuring;

• Basal Area.
• Canopy Openness.
• Soil Temperature Fluctuation.
• Herbaceous Weeds.
• Humidity Fluctuation.
• Tree Regeneration Density.
• Epiphyte Density.

There are a number of these plots around Invercargill. Here are 3 of Dr Wallace's slides from the talk.

Tracy and I are currently establishing a monitoring programme at Mt Chocolate to watch and study what happens over time as the bush regenerates and evolves into a Miro Swamp Forest. And we are also doing a lot of experiments with different propagation, planting, and maintenance methods to see what works best.

There are 3 broad zones at Mt Chocolate.

• The north end is sunny and dry with thin clayish soil.
• The middle is shady, cold, wet and sheltered from the wind with deep peat soil. It floods a lot in winter.
• The south end is exposed, damp and windy with organic soil.

Adding a plot in each zone similar to the People Cities Nature programme could add a lot of insight into understanding natural processes present. A friend Matt is going to help with setting up the plots in winter. We will have to make up some gadgets as well to help make the measurements. Aunty Google will no doubt come up with plans for gadgets.

The afternoon field trip to Otatara visited a plot at Bushy Point and the Community Nursery. It was a really useful day.

Avon and Friends

Avon Peters

Photo by John Griffiths

Avon is the official Mt Chocolate Site Manager.

Much loved by local kids, she patrols the boundaries, for anyone she can smooch.

Some days, the neighbouring horses and her take turns racing each other along the boundary fence after a good bit of nose touching.

She also races her friends coming up the road on the other side of the fence, especially the local postie who dotes on Avon.

Avon plans to be mum to all chickens, ducklings and small puppies who wander past on an evening stroll.

Phil Waddington on How to Set a Doc 200 Trap

Phil Waddington is the inventor of the DoC 200 trap which is widely used to catch pest animal predators of NZ native birds.

There is a great article about him on the Predator NZ website from 2018.

Predator Fee NZ has some recordings of Phil setting the traps safely on their YouTube Channel.