Trapper Monthly, June 2026

​Dear Trappers and Fantail Friends

Winter is here and it is murky and dark and cold and muddy. Gosh is it muddy! It is June after all, but trapping must go on! Still, every now and then there are glorious days full of sunshine. Glittering diamond sparkling calendar days I call them. It is winter’s engagement rings, and they make up for all the gloom!

There is another event in June lifting the spirits. It is the arrival of the golden flowers of the Kowhai tree! In fact, the first one I observed was on the 5th of June! The flowering will go on now until the end of October. And sometimes I ask myself do these trees take turns on which one can be first, and which one can be last? For it is every year different. It is never the same tree being first and never the same being last.

So, I tell you a little story. One of Māori mythology which is delightful in its explanation of such a wonder as the flowering of the Kowhai tree. There were two lovers sitting under a bare Kowhai tree in early spring. Let’s call them Hine and Tane. She was a girl of high birth, and he had the status of being a demigod. The boy asked the girl for her hand in marriage. But she answered that she would only marry him if he could prove his magical abilities to her.

The boy sat back and started murmuring incantations and prayers and then looked up into the Kowhai tree and suddenly the whole tree burst out into golden Kowhai flowers! He picked some of the flowers and formed a wreath or a golden crown with them and put them onto the head of the girl. And they were happily married ever after.

The deeply yellow flowers of the Kowhai tree are representing the sun, the prime source of life on earth, and they are also a sign of hope and renewal. As is spring. The two, the flowers and spring, are therefore one, a happy couple.
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The birds welcome the flowers indeed with great anticipation. Especially the bellbirds, the tuis also, but as yet we have none in the Rakaia Gorge, and the kereru. It is amazing sometimes to see a flock of bellbirds merrily singing in a single Kowhai tree and gorging themselves on the nectar. Happy days in the Rakaia Gorge!

Kowhai Flowers

But now to the numbers. The catches I mean. The sharp end of the business of trapping. It was a mixed bag. We had fifteen outings which is not bad for June and up to the 22nd   of June   I was hoping for a possum free month as we had caught none of the critters. But that dream got shattered on the 23rd when a single possum turned up under a trap called AT3. Right in the middle of the forest on Circle Line. But then the big shock came on the 24th when I found five possums in close proximity in traps along Waterloo Line. And then another one on Piccadilly Line in an old location. It was devastating. And on top of it, Marcel had another two at the end of the month. So, we had nine possums! How quick things can change.

As for the rats we had 28 of them. Not a record number but still a fair amount. The big surprise is the mustelids we caught, five stoats, five weasels and one ferret! It is impossible to work out why and especially the ferret is an exception. The good thing is that they are gone and will not do any more damage to the birdlife.

And it is shaping up to some spectacular song days. The bellbirds are taking over, but there are also grey warblers, fantails of course, kereru and the song thrushes have come back and in certain spots large groups of silvereyes are flitting in and out of bushes chirping to their life’s content. And the world is satisfied.
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Which brings me to the shop. The Fantail Shop. A most satisfying feature of the forest in the Rakaia Gorge. It delights me every day I come by and re-stock it  with tokens, painted stones, jewellery and postcards, beautiful postcards supplied by Juliana. A best seller. A big thank you to all who have contributed. 

My pride and joy!

​Another joyful pastime on these sometimes dreary days is just sitting there, looking outside and watch our birdfeeder. It is a simple device of a bottle turned upside down and filled with sugar water. Four parts of water and one part of sugar. And the silvereyes go crazy on it. They also fight for it so usually there is only one bird on the feeder until another one pushes in and claims the feeding spot. On occasion a bellbird flies in and then all the silvereyes vanish into the nearby bushes.

Amazing. At times there are up twenty birds sitting in the tree above, all waiting for their turn to have a few sips of sugar water. While it is easy to set it all up, you just buy a device at Mitre 10, care must be taken in keeping the feeder clean and changing the sugar water regularly, if it is not all consumed by the birds.

If the bird feeder is not looked after and cleaned often then the birds can get ill from bacteria or fungi and pass diseases to one another via the feeder. It also means that the sugar water needs to be changed as it can ferment especially on warmer days.
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Feeders are a good thing. While the birds might find enough natural food  out there a feeder makes their survival in extreme weather more likely. In studies overseas it has been shown that the birds going for the sugar water are unlikely to become dependent or even develop malnutrition by overfeeding. The sugar water simply supplements their diet. 

Silvereye

Silvereyes are also called Waxeyes or Tauhou in Māori which means stranger or new arrival as the birds introduced themselves in New Zealand sometime during the early 19th century. They are not threatened and live happily in forests as well as in towns and cities. They feed on insects, fruit and nectar. Often, I see them in large flocks on the open fields just above the forest feeding in matagouri bushes.
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Go to: Silvereye | Tauhou | New Zealand Birds Online to get more information and listen to their song. 

Silvereye closeup

Looking at birds and caring for birds is a great thing to do. It seems sometimes to me that New Zealand is becoming a nation of birds and bird watchers. Twitchers we should be called but Kiwi is probably more appropriate. Up and down the country people are out there trying to protect our native birds. A country where trapping predators is becoming a national sport, just behind rugby, cannot be a bad place to live in.

For instance, have you heard of Trixie and Nacho? Well, they are residents at the Isaac Conservation Centre in Christchurch and are a pair of Kakariki Karaka or Orange Fronted Parakeets. There are around 450 of these birds left. Trixie and Nacho are famous for having produced 55 babies since they hitched up in 2024!
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It has enabled the Department of Conservation to transfer 43 Kakariki Karaka to Pukenui or Anchor Island in Fiordland. The breeding programmes at the Isaac Centre are absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of these birds which have been declared extinct twice and were then rediscovered! So, Trixie and Nacho do their very best to safe their species from going extinct a third time! 

Kakariki

Two young Kakariki

Anchor Island is in Dusky Sound and is also home to kakapo, mohua and tieke and now the kakariki karaka. All endangered birds finding a refuge on the island which is predator free and relatively safe because it is 2.5 km from the mainland of New Zealand. Stoats and rats are not likely to swim that far.
It is here where in 1773 Captain Cook landed first on his second voyage to New Zealand on the Resolution and he named it therefore Anchor Island. There is a small harbour called Luncheon Cove where Cook and his crew ate crayfish!

Talking about birds we should also remind ourselves what Joseph Banks, the botanist on the ship of Captain Cook, recorded in his diary on the 17th January 1770:
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This morn I was awakd by the singing of the birds ashore from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile, the numbers of them were certainly very great who seemd to strain their throats with emulation perhaps; their voices were certainly the most melodious wild musick I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells but with the most tuneable silver sound imaginable to which maybe the distance was no small addition. On enquiring of our people I was told that they have had observd them ever since we have been here, and that they begin to sing at about 1 or 2 in the morn and continue till sunrise, after which they are silent all day like our nightingales.

Anchor Island

I found another interesting description of early New Zealand birdsong in a book by Maynard called ‘The Whalers’.  ‘The first to come and interrupt the silvery ringing of this little bell was the Tui. It flung into the night into the midst of the silence a fusillade of rapid and continuous notes, like a bouquet of fireworks. This was the first tenor, who took possession of the stage’.  And so on.
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Alas, such birdsong cannot be heard anymore as with the loss of forests and the introduction of rats, stoats and possums and other predators half of the birds of New Zealand are extinct, and the forests are mostly silent.

The Fantail Trust has set out to change all that and try to preserve what’s left. And while we might never achieve a completely predator free forest in the Rakaia Gorge we will give it our best shot. I cannot thank you all enough, and especially Marcel and Mel, Jon and Sue, Paul and Jo and Juliana and John and Barry.
 
Hope you enjoyed my newsletter and if you have someone who might be interested, please let me know.