Flight of Pollen

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a tide of tui

Cloak of Protection. FOREST
are spilling over the predator proof fence at Maungatautari Ecosanctuary, according to an article just published in Notornis – the research journal of BirdsNZ.

The study was carried out by Neil Fitzgerald, John Innes (SCIENCE ADVISOR, CLOAK of PROTECTION) and Norman Mason from Manaaki Whenua/Landcare Research.

Construction of a 47 km pest-resistant fence encircling 3,240 hectare of the forest was completed in August 2006 and eradication of all pest mammals except house mice commenced in November 2006.

“This created the largest area of virtually pest-free forest on the New Zealand mainland.

“Congregations of 100 or more tūī were reported 6 times. Such exceptional congregations of tūī have not been previously reported in Waikato.

“The increased presence of tūī in the wider landscape will help restore indigenous dominance in ecosystem processes such as pollination and seed dispersal.”

In Cloak of Protection, tūī live in the forest realm, but this movement shows that they could just as easily be settlement birds!

In Flight of Pollen, tūī are necessary pollinators and seed dispersers

from the article, Tūī spill out from Maungatautari, Predator Free NZ, blogpost
FEBRUARY 13, 2020 BY KATE GUTHRIE

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Playing Flight of Pollen on the Court

In Term 3, we played the outdoor version of Flight of Pollen, on the court, at St Anne’s School, Manurewa.
Pollinators collected pollen and transported it to hula-hoop flowers; pollen crawled through one hoop, then another, to the base of the flower; ripening time was spent playing touch-tag; and then pollinators became berry eaters and seed blowers. The winning team, DAY / NIGHT, collected the most seeds & berries.
WILD!
From there we went indoors, and played a truncated boardgame. Which game was best – indoor or outdoor? Opinion among the students was roughly divided in half.
Both versions were ‘nearly’ as good as Cloak of Protection. Which was high praise indeed – they’re mad about my first game, and play it at every opportunity!!

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Small things matter

Ti kouka / cabbage tree
and small things tend to get overlooked. Insects, spiders, and crustaceans get very little attention, yet they make up half of the world’s animal biomass

Insects are part of the web of life. They feed birds and fish and small creatures, and they pollinate our forests and our food.

Small things, miss them when they’re gone. . .

. . . due to farming and cities; pesticides and fertilizers; and invasive species.

It’s us. Which means we can do something. Start by planting a garden. Start by looking after soil health. And there they’ll be.

In Flight of Pollen ti kouka / cabbage tree (shown) is pollinated by hoverfly, native bee, honey bee, moth, gecko, bat, koromiko, and tui. They’ll all come quickly for its feast of nectar!

for more details go to:Truthout

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Otari Event 12th and 13th March 2019

Arihia, from Enviroschools Te Upoko o Te Ika a Māui- Greater Wellington
organised by Enviroschools Te Upoko o Te Ika a Māui- Greater Wellington, included an outdoor pollination game.

Arihia (pictured) worked on a version, based on Flight of Pollen. With the able assistance of the Otari School Bush Guides, over the two days, and with students from 8 schools, we played it a total of 14 times.

Showing great persistence, the Te Upoko o Te Ika a Māui Facilitors, have been working (with me), on a LARP (Live Action Role Play) version of the game, for quite a while.

We played at Otari Wiltons Bush, on the Troup lawn. Surrounding the lawn is a botannical ‘zoo’ containing the forest that once covered much of Wellington. Only one percent of native forest remains on the Wellington peninsula.
and half of that surrounded us(!)

While we ‘pollinated’ on the lawn, flying insects checked us out. And, as part of the event, students also saw pollen and gecko skin under microscope.

Feedback from students and teachers: ‘ I didn’t know that pollinators had to work so hard!’, ‘fun’, ‘exciting’, and ‘let’s play it back at school’

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Rivers as barriers

RATS in Cloak of Protection
even quite small rivers are an effective barrier to possum migration. So found ZIP (Zero Invasive Predators), in 2017, when they ran a trial in Remutaka Forest Park.

Last year, a similar trial began in the Perth River valley, to measure whether or not larger rivers are also an effective barrier to the migration of rats.

By 19 February 2019, after more than seven months of continuous bio-marking and trapping, confidence has grown. Trials were run across winter (where the river levels are lowest; the water is at its coldest; and rat breeding and dispersal activity is low), and across spring/summer (when the river levels rise as snow and ice melts; and rat breeding and movement increases).

“We are very encouraged by this promising result!” say the team.

Maybe, just maybe, some rats don’t like getting their feet wet!?

More information at Zero Invasive Predators Assessing the Perth River (and Scone Creek) as a barrier to rats

In Cloak of Protection, there are three rats: kiore; Norway; and Ship (shown).

Making Flight of Pollen we learnt that the endangered sort-tailed bat / pekapeka (which is a phenomenal pollinator), has had much of its role in our Native bush, taken over by the Ship rat – when the rat doesn’t eat everything in sight ie the whole flower (of course)!

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We had bumblebees

Bumble bee (top right)
living in our Isilkul apartment, back in the 1960s, writes V. S. Grebennikov in My World. There he often observed the following. . .

. . .A young bumblebee on its first trip away from the hive did not take the trouble to remember the entrance and would spend hours wandering around the windows of our house and of a similar-looking house nearby.

And in the evening, giving up on its poor visual memory, it would land on the brick wall, precisely outside the hive and would try to break right through it. How did the insect know that right there, four metres away from the entrance, and a metre and a half below, behind the thick, half-metre wall was its home nest?

Based on the structure of bee nests, I created a few dozen artificial honeycombs – of plastic, paper, metal, and wood. It turned out that the cause of all those unusual sensations was not a biological field, but the size, shape, number, and the arrangement of caverns formed by any solid objects.

I called the discovery the Cavernous Structures Effect (CSE). . .and the CSE cannot be shielded – it affects living organisms through walls, thick metal, and other screens. It does not decrease evenly with distance, but surrounds the honeycomb with a system of invisible, yet sometimes clearly perceivable “shells”.

Even clocks – both mechanical and electronic-placed in a strong CSE field start running inaccurately – time must also have a part in it. Back in the 20s the French physicist Louis des Broglie was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of these waves, and they were used in electronic microscopes.

This, and more, at http://www.keelynet.com/greb/greb.htm

The bumblebee is an important pollinator in Flight of Pollen. She gets up and gets going early, flies in the wind, and can sleep outdoors overnight. . .

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Putting bees and honeysuckle

on eco bags seemed like a good idea for Christmas /Summer Solstice presents

It’s all part of our environmental focus, and our education in sustainable choices.

The bees – native black, honey, and bumble – visit the flowers in Flight of Pollen and it’s a joy to see them out (along with the hoverfly) visiting flowers this summer. I learnt so much / observe with new eyes since creating this game.

It’s also a joy to be carrying them on a tote bag into the supermarket!!