Very Dry Summer

We often define a drought on Stewart Island as 5 days without much rain, but this summer has been the driest and calmest I can remember in 43 years of living here. As best I can find we haven’t had more than 10 or 15mm per month since late November. Fortunately we have managed a light shower every week or so, but even this hasn’t been enough to stop a major die off of many of our more vulnerable forest plants. All will recover of course, but it has been a quite remarkable summer and autumn.

Baby Coral Finger Fungi

Baby coral finger fungi in a normal year

This small fungi appears in a couple of locations in March each year, and grows to around 40mm high. It’s quite long lasting and we would expect to see it as pictured for a t least 6 weeks.

Baby coral finger fungi in the drought

This year it appeared on cue and grew to around 20mm before  succumbing to the dry conditions.

Normally there would be quite large numbers of assorted fungi to be seen throughout the forest, however this year virtually nothing.

As I type this I’m looking out to light drizzle, with a little more perhaps this afternoon. More is forecast for Sunday (it’s Friday today), so fingers crossed.

Robins Diet

Coprosma colensoi fruit

Yesterday on Ulva I noticed (but never managed to photograph) several different robins busily picking up small pieces of fruit off the ground, something I didn’t know they did. On investigation discovered they were eating Coprosma colensoi fruit. Also noticed several pairs feeding together, something we generally only see if they are breeding. If this is so it would be an unprecedented  third breeding this summer/autumn. I would doubt if they would be successful so close to winter, but will watch out for unbanded birds, which may indicate success.