In our first week of Enviro-Ed we noticed there weren't a lot of native birds in our gully, so we thought we better see what food there is in there for them. 🧐
Our native plant ‘treasure hunt’ yielded so many treasures! We found a small patch of a very edible plant named hangehange (which the kids devoured!), a plant named kawakawa which we learnt is one of our key rongoā plants, and we found lots of big mamaku and ponga ferns.
We also found a plant named whauwhaupaku which helps to heal our land where te korowai o Papatūānuku has been disturbed.
One child found a large plane tree which she thought looked a lot like a big kauri trees! So we discussed the interesting trait they share, where big flakes of bark are constantly shed to rid themselves of any little plants who might think their trunks are climbing frames! 🌱🌳
Near the end, Matua Amo pulled one out of the bag when he discovered our gully has a resident whānau of tuna! Eels are definitely one of our taonga species and so this was very exciting. We all thoroughly enjoyed watching the graceful movements of these beautiful creatures in their natural environment, and we had all sorts of wonderings...
Our next job will be to find out if these are longfin or shortfin eels! Our longfin eels grow to be the largest eel in the world, and are considered an ‘at risk’ species. So if this species is finding refuge here, the gully's even more of a taonga than we've realised 🌏❤️
So many discoveries to be made in the outdoors!
Until next time,
Matua Jake
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