Published as Issue No. 128
June 2, 2015
It’s about us: a talk about the Houghton Valley environs by Grant Corbishley of Hungerford Rd will take place at the Roxy Theatre, Miramar on Thursday 11 June at 7 pm. For the past 5 years Grant has been listening to his neighbours; their stories, their knowledge of the local past and their ideas for the future. From these encounters, 30 local projects have been initiated. The talk outlines how these projects have bought about social change and greater cohesiveness amongst locals.
Friends of Houghton Valley: Four hundred dollars raised and 20 new members (now 200) was the result of a recent fund raising and awareness book sale at Lyall Bay held by this Group, created to oppose the size of a 13-house development at 215 Houghton Bay Rd. The next event is a garage sale starting at 9 am on Saturday June 13 at 8 Cave Rd. See the Garage Sale Poster.
Here from the USA: Nine days ago HV School hosted 16 students and their tutors from the University of Minnesota, Crookston USA. The visit, organised by omnipresent Dave from Houghton Bay Rd, began with a presentation putting the school’s coastal forest project into context so they might know where it fitted into the big scheme of things since Gondwanaland and why our valley is so special.
Then everyone volunteered over three hours of vigorous work clearing blackberry, gorse, cape ivy and other invasive species using grubbers and loppers. They departed leaving behind a large area between the Haunted Hut Track and Fantail Guide Track cleared ready for school students to plant with native trees.
Requiem for a Grey Warbler: Its not often we get an insight into the life and times of creatures that share our lives in Houghton Valley and which in turn might be a ground breaking development – involving lice! Earlier this month bird enthusiast Rob and Janine of Houghton Bay Rd advised our very own bird-man Peter of Hornsey Rd they had found a dead grey warbler.
From the metal tag Peter advises the bird was banded at the little stream across the field from the kids playground in Houghton Bay on 7 June 2014. It was aged then as a first year bird so probably fledged in the Spring/summer of 13/14 and would have most likely have produced offspring last year. This is probably about an average age for a Grey Warbler; the oldest on record is just over 4 years. They are a bit like Fantails, breed very rapidly when they can but don’t live very long.
He further commented, “I coordinate a group that band birds in this area (sometimes local children are involved – see attached) and have been doing it for about 20 years. We get very few Grey Warbler recoveries, they are so small and bodies are rarely found.
“The body is now at Te Papa where it might go into the collection, but may have been dead a bit long. Otherwise Ricardo Palma the Te Papa (and world) louse expert will try and find lice, he has a female of an unknown species from a Grey Warbler but needs a male to positively ID the species which might possible be new to science. We have been trying to find one for ages without any success.”
[Watch this space for a world scoop]
Norman and contributors