Jon and Sue came out here in fact for a birthday celebration. But we did manage to get out on their first day here and we were able to deploy three more traps. Automatic ones. A104, A105 and A106! They are in an area which we have not trapped that much before. Just above the river and below the walkway. Not easy to access. It was such a wonderful, beautiful day. And when we worked on one trap attaching it to a kowhai tree there were at least 20 bellbirds right above us. Plus we heard several times a kereru flying past. Then on the next day they went down onto Piccadilly Line and got a rat in D3 and one in D27. Both traps have been there for a while now and have not caught anything recently. So good to know that they are still necessary. Encouraging was also an article that I read that in Wellington on the Miramar peninsula they have eradicated Norway rats, weasels and almost all ship rats. The Norway rats are very large but we do not seem to have any here. Thanks God. They did it all with trapping. No poisons used. They have thousands of traps all around the suburbs and coastline and have been going for about ten years I think. So that really was good news for me because if they can do it then so can we. Mind you the terrain here is quite different from up in Wellington. Some areas of the gorge are just too steep to put traps in. So maybe some rats will always be there and from there re-infest the forest. Such a nuisance. Our tally for August was 21 possums, 42 rats and 1 weasel. Not bad. In fact the best result since January. We had 24 trapping days in August. Thank you so much everybody for helping.
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Down Piccadilly Line today. Just crossing over to the walkway a young man came along. So I asked him have you seen the closed sign and danger sign at other end of walkway. No he said. Maybe somebody moved it? Anyway I talked to him and he was interested in the traps. He was from Holland working in Singapore. So I took him along to hopefully show him a dead rat. Alas there was no dead rat! But I opened a trap to show him the mechanics. Then we got to near coalmine and T6 had two possusms!!! Quite exciting for him because he had never seen a possum let along a dead one. So today we got three more possies. The first one was down at the house where the people complained about a possum always coming to their doorstep and leaving a mess. So now we got it! But today's highlight was the sighting of two kereru! First there was one sitting on bare branch and then suddenly a second one flew in from further down. Very exciting and beautiful. Checked all the new traps and had a rat in one of them. That is good news because now I know they work. They are different from all the other traps. Wooden boxes too but smaller so I do not think I get stoats in them. Mainly rats. They are the ones I got for free from the prison guys in Christchurch.
Then I went down Waterloo Line and did only get a rat in D42 and a possum in T45. Which is great news. The rats will soon be in the thousands |
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