Silver Lining

Hope everyone up north had a great Memorial Day. I was hoping to be back in the states for this weekend, but circumstance had other plans.

The silver lining to staying here was that it gave me more time to generate some data. Characteristically my reactions didn't start working until the very last minute, so I've spent the last couple days analyzing what little data I have for the meetings I have up at my field site starting tomorrow. Phew!

Last night I took a break from the last-minute number-crunching with my visiting adviser to go on a nocturnal tour of the wildlife sanctuary. After watching the kakas come in for parrot happy hour we wandered around the sanctuary looking at glowworms and listening for kiwi. The glowworms are actually fly larvae that attract their prey by having luminescent digestive tracts. They glow green and are usually in under-hanging bits of rotten logs or caves, like little constellations dotting the forest.

We'd pretty well given up on seeing kiwi - we'd heard a male but it was quite wet out. We decided to head up and look at the glow worms in the old mine. Walking up the track my flash light beam swung onto something that moved, and as I swung it back I realized that a kiwi was right next to my boot! I think it realized the same thing at the same time, because it made tracks off into the forest pretty quick. They move almost silently in the wet bush, but our guide said they're quite easy to hear in the dry.

The kiwi don't fare well with cats and dogs, so seeing them within the sanctuary is probably my best bet, especially for the little spotted kiwi, the species we saw. I'm hoping to eventually lead the night tours at the sanctuary, or at least participate in the kiwi census counts that they do every so often. I'm really looking forward to taking visitors along and showing them this wonderful fairy land... including any of you lot that I can cajole into coming down.