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Christopher Stephens @CMKMStephens

Birds, moths, geckos, skinks, orchids! (to name a few). All up on @iNaturalistNZ and openly licensed. Provisional CMKMStephens elsewhere set up for sinking ship

Joined July 2014
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Christopher Stephens@CMKMStephens
5 Jan 2023
A BIG tick on my wishlist, the South Island Lichen Moth (Declana egregia). Check your $100 bill the next time you have one for some mysterious reason people 💸💸
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Until such time as I do move entirely, this is still a place to scream Fucking @metlinkwgtn , with cancelled commuter trains at peak time on the HVL, with bus replacements that don't exist, on a day pouring with rain.
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If the bus replacement is 12 mins later then, what's the fucking point? The next train is in 7 mins and will easily beat it to Wellington.
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That's probably enough, so I'll just leave you with this perfect day.
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I've realised I forgot about the NI Mātātā / Fernbirds. Having been translocated several years ago now, the island is FULL of them. Peeping (verbally, visually) at you at all times, in all places.
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Took excessively detailed macro shots of the flower of the NZ Iceplants
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Rauhuia (Linum monogynum ssp. monogynum) likewise.
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Clematis forsteri was just starting up
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Botanically, the best thing was probably finally getting to see Cook Strait Māhoe (Melicytus orarius) in its prolific full flower.
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No trip to Mana Island is complete without coastal jumping spiders. These are 'Marpissa marina', though almost certainly a complex of different species across the country. I had to wait perfectly still above the spider's lookout pebble, as they kept going down among the rocks.
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My 'big' score for the weekend was finally getting some photos of Hutton's Speargrass Weevil (Lyperobius huttoni) These were translocated from Te Kopahou Reserve on on the Wellington south coast. I've never managed to find them there, nor on Mana until now.
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Male and female korimako going nuts over flowering and fruiting Five-finger/psuedopanax/houhou
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Male bellbird/korimako, surveying the kingdom.
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A pōpokatea/whitehead
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Overall, and without having any intent of groping them, the birds were a bit hard to get shots of - unusual. Usually I come away with a zillion kākāriki photos. Here's some of the better Yellow-crowned kākāriki photos.
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and here's some Fairy Prions and band checking. Apart from maybe some documentation with photos I'm not sure I did anything useful though. I did hold/restrain a Fairy Prion briefly - it wasn't happy about it - not the little claws in 3rd photo.
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On the 2nd night I hadn't been tasked to anything, so I went out to the cliffs for the artificial burrow monitoring - checking occupation and bands of Fairy Prions/tītī wainui and Diving Petrels/kuaka. Here's a Diving Petrel
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To round off the geckos and skinks, a side goal on the island was to get some more shots of the McGregor's Skink - a big one that likes sunny beaches, and is relict to just some offshore islands. and this was achieved.
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and by day...so long as there were flaxes left!
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Moving on, not in the pitfalls but continuing with the herpetofauna, the flax loving Gold-striped geckos were still all over the place by night...
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and I didn't take any photos of the Raukawa geckos in the pitfalls, so here's one from at night.
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