White Faced Heron and Banded Rail

 Our wetland at Old Mill Lane is a wonderful place to view our wetland birds. Here is White faced Heron and Banded Rail - Always in a hurry to somewhere.

Forest Gecko

We found this lovely little Forest Gecko on our path. It was really windy so we think it was shaken out of the kanuka nearby.

Cave Weta

 Cave Weta. We see these little fellows often at our place. This males body is about 15mm long. Very docile fellow. Its a real good jumper with those powerful legs.

Black Shag (Great Cormarant) in our wetland

 On Occasion our wetland stream is visited by this Black Shag, Today I managed to sneak close enough for some shots.

Hoppy Spider

 Melva found this beautiful fellow on a chilly plant.

Monarchs

Our lounge at the moment with about 10 Monarch Chrysalis under way. We take the caterpillars inside to protect them from the wasps and South African Preying Mantis until they can fly away. This one emerged today.

Mioweka (Banded Rail) Gets a Meal

Fishing, fishing.....

Nursery Web Spider

You have to love this lady. She is so very protective of her eggs that when I touch her she does not move away. There is a large egg ball aout one centimetre in diameter inside the web below her. She will stay there every day until the young leave the nest.

Spotless Crake Chicks in Our Wetland

We have an addition to our wetland population by two Spotless Crake chicks.

Wonderful to see them so small running about after the parents.
https://youtu.be/prcJzhMagc8

Love to see Pateke and Mioweka in our wetland

Our Trail camera caught these fellows. The Pateke are busy feeding and the Mioweka was spooked by Kotare.
Pateke https://youtu.be/xgI8tlHEmCo
Mioweka https://youtu.be/1d4iTkVruNk

Homegrown Cayenne Pepper

Melva's beautiful sun dried homegrown Cayenne Pepper

Bittern

So cool to see Matuku in our wetland last week. Caught on camera trap.

Spotless Crake in our Wetland

10:53am on the 27th April our trail camera caught this Spotless Crake in our wetland right by the boardwalk. Old Mill Ln, Ngunguru. Love these shy little guys.

And Another Coprosma in Our Wetland

This one has white to pale mauve fruit.

And Yet Another Prolific Coprosma.

This is the nicest, sweetest coprosma berries we have discovered.
It is right by our boardwalk at The Riverbank Homestay and B&B

Crazy as Coprosma fruiting.

This Coprosma at The Riverbank has gone overboard this season fruiting.

Our Spotless Crake Chicks

A week later and all seems good. So lovely to see them in our wetland.

Spotless Crake Families in our wetland

Exciting news. We have two Spotless Crake families in our wetland.

Piwak Tahi & Rua and their nest (Piwakawaka)

We had a lot of enjoyment as Piwak Tahi and Rua built their nest below our deck. It wa in an easily observed place. Through the hatching period and early chick raising both parents were sitting on the eggs and feeding the chicks until the male, Tahi  disappeared. Then it was all up to Rua. She really worked hard keeping the remaining chick Tama warm and fed. One night and not far from fledging Tama fell out of the nest. We found it alive and below the nest. Put it back and Rua carried on as if nothing had happened. Feeding, feeding and dodging the aggressive Tui. Tama was quite developed and sitting on the edge of the nest waiting for food. A friend managed some great photos. Sadly the next day we found Tama dead in the nest. It is such a hard life for small creatures.

Tama

Rua feeding Tama

Rua feeding Tama

Tahi sitting on eggs. The nest is mostly constructed of Alaskan Yellow Cedar shavings from my boat building

A worn out Rua