June 2025 Newsletter

June 2025 Newsletter
(Edition 104)

Upcoming Volunteer Trips

If you are interested in your midweek group volunteering on the island, please email Simon on volunteermotuihe@gmail.com

We have these volunteer trips coming up, all travelling by water taxi from Okahu Bay:
Sunday 6 July (general volunteer day, rescheduled from 29 June)
Sunday 13 July (endangered plants)
Thursday 17 July (controlling invasive weeds)
Sat 2-Sun 3 Aug (penguin survey and training overnighter)
Saturday 9 Aug (general volunteer day, planting)
Wednesday 20 Aug (controlling invasive weeds)
Saturday 23 Aug (endangered plants)
Saturday 30 Aug (Auckland Uni International students - looking for leaders)

Individuals can book on any of these trips by registering here:
volunteer registration
or email operations@motuihe.org.nz
As we have limited space on each trip, please only register for a trip once you are sure you are able to make it.

Volunteering Opportunities

We are planning an overnight survey of our kororā population on August 2nd and 3rd, accommodation with be in the woolshed. As well as our beach survey, there'll be training from Melissa McLuskie of the NZ Penguin Initiative,
who supports us in our penguin project.

Contact operations@motuihe.org.nz if you would like more information.

volu

You can read more about penguins in the NZPI newsletter here: NZPI newsletter

Fungi On the Island

Cool, wet weather may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure gets fungi popping! Recent visits to Motuihe have shown that the rain is bringing out an array of these remarkable organisms. We are running a long-term project through the citizen science app iNaturalist to record the fungi growing on Motuihe. We encourage all visitors to photograph and upload their fungi sightings to iNaturalist to contribute to this project. It is very user-friendly, all you need are clear, focused images of fungi showing their top, bottom and some form of scale (your hand will do!).

You can even enter your photos into the Trust’s photo competition to get double brownie points - details are on our website www.motuihe.org.nz

Photos: Bella Burgess

A Piece of Motuihe History - The Graham Family, Early Farmers

Earlier this month Andrew Veale was in touch, he was doing research for a book on Wallabies in New Zealand. He had come across a reference to Motuihe in the material he was reading and asked if Fiona could tell him more. We know little about the early farmers, but Fiona has pieced together what we already know and what Andrew could add to the story of the Grahams.

Robert Graham emigrated to NZ in 1842 from Scotland and went into a business partnership with his brother David. They were general merchants in Russell. This partnership was dissolved in 1850, and Robert moved to Auckland and bought up large holdings of land including Waiwera, Ellerslie, Waiuku and Motutapu. In Ellerslie, he established a zoo and on Motutapu he ran a pedigree cattle and sheep farm. He later became Superintendent of the Auckland Provincial Council. He was fluent in Maori and died in 1885. His other brother, John, bought Motuihe from Campbell and Brown in 1858.

John got into financial trouble and mortgaged the island and eventually sold it to Robert in 1863. John continued to farm Motuihe. He drowned when his boat turned over while travelling out to Motuihe on 7 May 1868. Robert released a number of game animals and birds on Motuihe and on Motutapu including deer, possum, wallaby, pheasants, partridges, quail, rabbits, ostriches, emus and sparrows.

Roni Harrison, the founder of the Motuihe Trust, held a reunion in the mid-1990s. A very elderly lady in a wheelchair, Amy Haddock, was brought to the island by her family. She told Roni her mother was John Graham’s daughter, and she remembered standing with her mother on the Motuihe cliff looking out to sea because her father was missing. She remembered it because her mother held her hand so tightly that it hurt her.

Sale advertisement from 1868 (after John's death)

Unusual Visitor to Motuihe

A recent trip to Motuihe by a group of ecologists from Bioresearches noticed an unusual bird amongst the usual flock of terns perched on the wharf. This bird had the reverse of the tern’s markings with a black body and white cap on its head. The bird was identified as a black noddy (Anous minutus). This species breeds in the Kermadec Islands and is only very rarely seen on mainland New Zealand. In fact, this sighting was the first for the species listed on iNaturalist in the country!

Photo: Levi Murdoch-Tighe

Black noddies are listed as Nationally Vulnerable. The common name ‘noddy’ refers to the movements the birds make during courting, where pairs will repeatedly nod at one another.

Wednesday 28th May - Visit from Sustainable Coastlines

Sustainable Coastlines visited Motuihe with a group of students from Philadelphia and did an amazing job of cleaning up debris from our beaches. A big call-out to the team and the great work they do - www.sustainablecoastlines.org.

During the visit, the volunteers found a ridiculous number of nurdles/pre-production plastic resin pellets on the beaches. After finding out that Waiheke had a similar problem, the media became involved, and an article was published in the NZ Herald:
Plastic beads in the NZ Herald

Hopefully, everyone keeps the pressure on the plastics industry to clean up their act!

Photos courtesy of Sustainable Coastlines

Tuesday 3rd June - Rubbish Barge

Trevor Cook from DoC arranged a barge to remove a large amount of rubbish from the island that had accumulated over many years. We were very fortunate to be able to piggyback on this opportunity and remove some of the clutter around the woolshed - our thanks to Trevor, Paul, Seana and DoC for enabling this to happen.

The timing of the barge caught us off guard, as arrival and departure from the ramp are controlled by tides, and the only date available was much sooner than expected. Luckily we have amazing volunteers, and a team was assembled at short notice. An early departure from Okahu Bay and a super-efficient team effort meant we were able to prepare the rubbish for the arrival of the barge at 11 am. We were surprised at how small the empty barge looked next to the mammoth pile of rubbish, and even more surprised when most of it fitted on board!

Saturday 7th June - General Volunteer Day

A small and enthusiastic group battled through colonisers up the hill on the southern side of Ramp paddock to plant canopy trees (Titoki, Houpara, Tawapou, Wharangi, Totara, Pigeonwood, Taraire, Puriri). It will be great to see these giants popping their heads up through the manuka in years to come. After lunch, the team moved to Tieke track planting Dianella and Hangehange 2-3 metres in from the track edge. Through the day the Tieke, Kakariki, Kereru and Fantails entertained us all - it's rewarding to hear the birdsong increasing each season. Chloe tried her best to entice the friendly fantail with a worm. Hope you come back Chloe, we enjoyed having you and your Mum Gemma.

While the planting was going on in earnest, a fantastic group kicked off a new project for the Project - the specialist weeding team. This group will focus on weeds that have so far mostly slipped under the radar. The team wasted no time in familiarising themselves with some of their target species, including bindweed, stinking iris, honeysuckle and gravel groundsell, then got stuck in and removed the only patch of tuber ladder fern identified on the island - what a start! The efforts of this team will ensure that unexpected weed species won't develop into significant problems like mothplant, woolly nightshade and rhamnus.

The specialist weed team are trialling new technology to help with their work - the CAMS weed app, along with iNaturalist. We hope that these apps will help everyone to track weeds and ensure that they are treated efficiently. A big thanks to the specialist weed team volunteers for starting the project with so much enthusiasm.

Some of the planting team (Lois Badham)

Saturday 14th June - kākābeak Volunteer Day

The June Rare Plants trip was a productive one. A team of 17 set out and planted 554 rare and threatened plants across five sites, as well as pricking out 672 new seedlings - all in just one day! This effort means that all of the kākābeak have been planted for the season, giving them the best opportunity to grow strong roots ahead of spring's arrival. The other rare and threatened plants that went into the ground were Scandia rosifolia (koheriki), Wahlenbergia vernicosa (coastal harebell) and Ozothamnus leptophyllus (tauhinu). Together, these plants are hoped to grow into a community of coastal species that once would have occurred throughout the Hauraki Gulf.

The team also checked on our mistletoe seeds and was delighted to find new leaves and attachment points on some of them. These plants need to attach to a host plant for survival and are notoriously tricky to cultivate.

Checking for mistletoe survival on Totara (Gabrielle Johnson)

A massive thank you to all the volunteers who came out and made this work possible. Together, we are proud to be making a positive difference to plant species on the brink.