Whio Fun and Mulching Madness in Tūrangi
We’ve been busy in Tūrangi! We loved going to the Tūrangi library and sharing information about the wonderful whio that live in the river near there, then the next week seeing many of the same tamariki at our Tūrangi mulching event. Our kairuruku reo Māori, Bronson, went in to Te Kura o Hirangi to do sessions about freshwater biodiversity and biosecurity with every class too!
Whio Fun in the Library
The library had asked us to come in and do a toddler time session and we thought that would be great. Very quickly the session filled up, with over 100 school students RSVPing! So, we decided to run a series of sessions for different ages. We ended up with a toddler time session, a session for Tongariro School student,s and a session for Te Kura o Hirangi.
We read a book about whio, sang a song, played with puppets and did crafts with the toddlers. Then learnt about whio kai- freshwater macro invertebrates, looked at a taxidermy whio, and had a slideshow presentation about these amazing birds for the older students. They loved hearing the sound that whio make- a growl from the female and a whistle from the male. It was also lots of fun to be a whio and look through water samples to spot the freshwater macroinvertebrates that whio eat.
Te Kura o Hirangi got to try out the new te reo Māori Freshwater macroinvertebrate resources that we had just made with our WRC EIF funding and the help of Akuira Walker.
Did you know that these special surfing ducks are 20x rarer than kiwi?
They have rubber bumpers on their beaks and feet that fold up like umbrellas, and they whistle!
Mulching Madness at Wiremū St Reserve
Our mulching event in the Wiremū St Reserve restoration project site was lots of fun. It was wonderful to see the students run excitedly to see their ‘babies’ - the plants that they planted last year. They checked on them, carefully weeded around them and then mulched a protective blanket around them. The tamariki from Te Kura o Hirangi and Tongariro School were also excited to reconnect with each other. They worked together to pull flowering cherry seedlings, then move two huge piles of mulch, one bucket at a time to their planting area. The mulch blanket suppresses weeds in the spring, locks in moisture for the summer, keeps the plant warm in the winter and provides nutrition for the plant all year round. It is very magical stuff!
After their hard work was done, they were rewarded with an ice cream, scooped by Shannon from TDC. Our coordinators shared stories about the pīpīwharauroa (shining cuckoo) that they could hear calling, and the spittle bugs that they found all around them. It was a fun day of learning, nature connection, and improving the local environment.
