2024-10-26

The Pomona Kiwi News is now a proper newsletter, easy to subscribe and unsubscribe.

I rafted to Pomona on the 17th October to:

• service 10 permanent kiwi micro moths.

• Firmware needed an upgrade,

• the recording schedule needed changing to summer hours,

• and sample rate needed to be reduced from 16000Hz to 8000Hz to match DOC practice and to extend battery life.

I am late again. The batteries have been flat some time. The last months have been busy with 2 trips to the Hollyford/Kaipo punctuated with health issues and never ending bad weather.

Thankfully the weather was calm and beautiful on the way in and out.

Active Moth Locations (Pomona/Rona)

• Micro Moths: A05, C05, D03, D09, F10, G05, H04, M04, N14, N20

• Pomona 24/7 - 1/30 Moths: C03, G05, H01, J11, P09

• Rona 24/7 - 1/30 Moths: 287, 343, 620, 635, 778.1

I was on Pomona 2 nights, mostly warm, calm and overcast with a brief burst of beautiful sun.

Trouble with N20 again, only the config file saved, no audio data. This means I set it up correctly, but it subsequntly never turned on to begin recording.

There were a total of 2801 detections, 217 or 7.75% were false positives.

Check out trip statistics

Kiwi Audio

• Close female at C05

• Male from C05

• Duet C05

• Duet D03!

• Female D09

• Duet D09

• Very good duet D09

• Female F10

• Very long duet F10

• Duet F10

• Juvenile?? F10

• Female G05

• Duet G05

• H04 Duet

• Unusual M04

• Duet M04

• N14 Duet

• N14 Duet

• Interesting Duet N14

Other Audio

• Good Morning

Bowen

I was in the Bowen on the 15th of October trap checking with Stanley Mulvany.

The one moth at B29 recording 1 in 30, 24/7, is due to be serviced in February/March.

It was last serviced in May and is regularly recording a male, female and duets.

There is at least 1 more pair further up the valley, 2 new moths on hand to be deployed in the Bowen in late summer.

Hollyford

I deployed 7 moths in the Hollyford/Kaipo/Pembroke Wilderness recording 1 min in 40, 24/7 late July 2024.

In addition DOC recorders were deployed in the Hollyford and Kaipo.

Moth data still outstanding but no kiwi were detected by the DOC recorders.

The search continues. 2 moths are to be deployed in coming months in Moraine Creek and then the Harrison (eventually the Bowen).

5 more moths are to be deployed in the Hollyford/Kaipo/Pembroke in November (6th-13th).

We have borrowed 10 DOC recorders to attempt to record Bittern on the November trap check.

Kahurangi

Thanks to Inge Bolt and Robin and Sandy Toy, I have had access to a large amound of Roroa Great Spotted Kiwi data from the Kahurangi area.

I am atttempting to train a big new model including this data. Hopefully it will generalise well and detect fewer false positives in previously unseen data.

We hope to get access to Little Spotted Kiwi data, and to train a recogniser to distinguish between LSK and GSK.

Gorge River

Thanks to Stanley Mulvany and Paula MacFarlane, there are 9 moths recording 1 min in 40, 24/7, deployed between Barn Bay and the Cascade. They started recording on 1 March 2024 and are due to be serviced during January.

Total Moths Deployed: 44

Future Plans

• Spey Valley

• Iris Burn Valley

• More in the Junction Hill area

• More in the Hollyford/Kaipo/Pembroke Wilderness

• Stuart Mountains

• Murchison Mountains

• Big new kiwi recogniser

• LSK/GSK recogniser

• Attempt to distinguish individual kiwi from their calls

• Multi species recogniser

• Review 250 000 Hz data already collected, bat/rat/mouse vocalisations

• Labelling/Inference iPad app (big maybe)

Funding

Meridian declined to fund the project but invited me to apply next round in conjunction with relevant community groups. They are reluctant to fund individuals.

No response from Save the Kiwi or the Les Hutchins Foundation.