A slight change of pace this weekend, I travelled north to the Waipoua Forest area with housemate Jen and a colleague of hers, Jethro, from the Biology dept.
Initially we went on a guided night walk to try and spot Kiwis, and despite spotting many snails, trees, spiders and various insects, we didn't see any Kiwis at all. Although we did hear a couple, but they never showed  :o(

Next morning we did a few day hikes to see the mighty Kauri trees of New Zealand, including Tane Mahuta, the "God of the Forest". He's a Kauri tree over 50m high, 14m in girth and over 2000 years old.
Again we spotted plenty of local fauna, enough to keep the biologists rabbiting for hours at least, and I finally learnt what a New Zealand pigeon sounds like. ("whoop, whoop" - you can only hear their wings beating, they don't actually call)



Ready for a night hike!




Showing my hippy roots and hugging a tree