We had a lovely day and location for our 100th trip. (Our first Critter Club trip was in March 2016, to Travis Wetland.)

Kaitorete Spit is about 28 km long, and forms a barrier, that is occasionally breached, between Lakes Ellesmere and the Pacific ocean. The land is a low lying gravel bar, covered with low coarse-sand dunes.

The vegetation has to survive very hot and dry conditions in summer, as well as salt-laden winds.

The site has an interesting assemblage of plants and animals, including some that are very rare. Some of them are so rare that they are not found anywhere else in the world!

Among the animals, there are 130 moth and butterflies species: 126 native and 6 of them that only occur on Kaitorete spit. There are also (at least) 4 species of lizard there.

We will probably go this site again, in summer – there would be lots more insects to see, and we would love to see a lizard. And, we will try harder to make sure everyone can find it… Below is some of what we saw on 10 June 2019.

Animals

Springtails

This weeks springtails were purple!

Common Rough Woodlouse / Slaters

Araneomorphae spiders

Araneoid Spiders

Sooty Orbweaver

Snout Mites

(Related to spiders – both in Class Arachnida.)

Insects

True Crickets and Allies

Ichneumonid Wasps

Small Grass Fly

Dark-winged Fungus Gnats

Butterflies and Moths

We are guessing that this little ‘inch worm’ is the caterpillar of a butterfly or moth.

https://vimeo.com/343786089

Copper Butterflies

Birds

Feral Pigeon

There were other birds, but they are problematic to photograph…

Plants

The area we were exploring had grassland, with clumps of (mostly) native shrubs and climbers.

Vines & Climbers

Leafless Lawyer

Rubus schmidelioides

New Zealand Bindweed

Scrambling pohuehue

Shrubs

Miki

Porcupine Shrub

Matagouri

Patotara

Smaller herbaceous plants

Great mullein

Hypoxis hookeri

Moss

Campylopus clavatus

Triquetrella papillata

Woolly Fringe-moss

Juniper haircap moss

Lichens

Ramalina inflexa

Mealy Pixie Cup

Xanthoparmelia verisidiosa

Beard lichens

 

Our thanks to the folk at iNaturalist NZ for their help with identifications.

Reference

The Natural History of Canterbury. Ed: Winterbourn M, Knox G, Burrows C, Marsden I. (2008) Canterbury University Press.