Backroader: Return to Whenua Hou (Codfish Island)

Living on Rakiura comes with so many benefits. Spring is a lovely season anywhere but I'm blown away by the increase in bird activity here. Yesterday I would have seen over 50 tui, a score of kaka and kereru and several korimako (bellbirds) during the walk to my rat line and home again and heard my second pipiwharauroa (shining cuckoo) of the season this morning. What a buzz!

My big news of the week was experiencing my first helicopter trip across to Whenua Hou last Thursday. A frosty start turned into a stunning sunny and calm day, just perfect flying conditions topped off by being offered a seat up front the Rakiura Helicopters Hughes 500. I'll let the photos do the talking!

Paterson Inlet with Mason Bay (white strip) in background

Closer view of Mason Bay

About to fly over West Ruggedy Beach on way to
Whenua Hou (Codfish Island)

Whenua Hou helipad

Sealers Bay Hut

It was a wonderful ride and was much quicker than I thought it would be. We had great views of Paterson Inlet, the Ruggedy Range and Mason Bay - I took quite a lot of video footage but haven't downloaded it from the camera yet.

The reason for going over to Codfish was to search for Hieracium pilocella or Mouse-eared hawkweed (recently renamed to Pilocella officinarum). There's a good description of it on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieracium_pilosella. DOC's plan to eradicate the weed on Codfish means annual visits to grid search the sand dunes on Sealers Bay: the weed team lines up on the beach between two red poles and makes its way through the dunes to the bush line, guided by red poles every 20 metres or so. There is a lot of crawling on hands and knees and the phrase 'like looking for a needle in a haystack' came to mind many times!! When Hieracium was found it was marked with a waypoint on our GPS and sprayed. When we reached the end of one line, the eastern red marker leap-frogged the western one and we started all over again.

Hieracium pilosella (left), dandelion on right

No Hieracium here!!

Looking west along Sealers Bay - the red markers show our next line

Looking east along Sealers Bay - what's already been done

The best office view in the world! Having lunch
on Sealers Bay, looking over to the Ruggedies

The last time I was on Whenua Hou it was very busy due to kakapo breeding time and Sirocco was paying nightly visits to the hut. This time was a lot more relaxed; there were only 9 of us at the hut and Sirocco is entertaining Wellingtonians and visitors at Zealandia until the end of October - well worth a visit to see him if you're up that way, more information at http://www.visitzealandia.com/Site/Zealandia_Home/Inside/Whats_On/Sirocco_the_kakapo_at_ZEALANDIA_Karori_Sanctuary/home.aspx

The hut is very comfortable and the lounge/dining/kitchen area was transformed into a home cinema for the weekend quarterfinal RWC matches. The dress-up bag was brought out and everyone dressed up on Saturday night in their favoured team colours; my green dress didn't help the Irish though!! Anna gave a great felting demonstration on Thursday night and we watched the movie 'The Way Back' on Friday night. Fun times and a great bunch of people to be with. The weather was perfect; the only rain we had fell overnight so didn't delay our weed search and the chopper ride back to Oban was another great experience.