🌿 Tonight! 🌿
Celebrate Conservation Week 2025 with us at the Boathouse, Nelson.
📅 Tuesday 2 September
🕖 7–8.30 pm
📍 The Boathouse, Nelson
✨ Hear from Robert Schadewinkel, our Sanctuary ecologist, on restoring a thriving forest ecosystem and the ...recent return of kiwi pukupuku and tuatara.
✨ Discover insights from Katherine Chamberlain and 16 years of bird monitoring at the Sanctuary.
This evening is a chance to connect with the Sanctuary, dive into the challenges and opportunities of conservation, and be inspired by the mahi shaping Aotearoa’s ecological future.
🎟️ Doors open 6.45 pm – koha entry.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1022351526498806/
#ConservationWeek #BrookSanctuary #NelsonNZ #EcologyInAction
🌸📸 Spring Photography Competition — now open! 🌿
Spring is starting to burst into life at the Sanctuary. From unfurling fern fronds to kōwhai blossoms alive with birdsong, spring at the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary is full of moments worth capturing.
We’re inviting ...photographers of all ages to capture the magic of the ngahere and celebrate the season with us. You could also be in with a chance of winning some prizes!
🏆 Categories & Prizes
🥇 Junior Photographer (under 18) → Instant camera + 2x Night Tour tickets
🥇 Adult Amateur Photographer (18+) → 2x Night Tour tickets
✨ Winners will also be featured in our newsletter, on social media, and displayed at the Visitor Centre.
📅 How to enter
✅ Take your photo at the Sanctuary between 1 Sept – 30 Nov
✅ Submit it via our online form
✅ Optional: share on Instagram, tag @brooksanctuary + use #BrookPhotoCompSpring
🌿 Tips for spring shots
Look out for budding leaves, fungi, flowering mānuka, and native birds. Use natural light, be patient, and always respect wildlife.
➡️ Full details & entry form: Link in our bio
#BrookSanctuary #BrookPhotoCompSpring #NelsonNZ #NaturePhotography
🌸📸 Spring Photography Competition — now open! 🌿
Spring is starting to burst into life at the Sanctuary. From unfurling fern fronds to kōwhai blossoms alive with birdsong, spring at the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary is full of moments worth capturing.
We’re inviting ...photographers of all ages to capture the magic of the ngahere and celebrate the season with us. You could also be in with a chance of winning some prizes!
🏆 Categories & Prizes
🥇 Junior Photographer (under 18) → Instant camera + 2x Night Tour tickets
🥇 Adult Amateur Photographer (18+) → 2x Night Tour tickets
✨ Winners will also be featured in our newsletter, on social media, and displayed at the Visitor Centre.
📅 How to enter
✅ Take your photo at the Sanctuary between 1 Sept – 30 Nov
✅ Submit it via our online form
✅ Optional: share on Instagram, tag @brooksanctuary + use #BrookPhotoCompSpring
🌿 Tips for spring shots
Look out for budding leaves, fungi, flowering mānuka, and native birds. Use natural light, be patient, and always respect wildlife.
➡️ Full details & entry form: https://www.brooksanctuary.org.nz/photography-competition
#BrookSanctuary #BrookPhotoCompSpring #NelsonNZ #NaturePhotography
🪶🌿 What do kākāriki karaka eat? 🌸🍃
These critically endangered parakeets have a varied diet, taking insects throughout the year and eating leaves, fruits, flowers, and seeds when available. They generally destroy seeds with their beak and only swallow whole tiny seeds, such ...as those of kōtukutuku.
Despite being far more recent arrivals to the country compared with the deeply endemic kākā, kākāriki have forged an important role in the forest ecosystem. They are able to exploit excesses of food by producing many offspring. During a beech mast, kākāriki numbers would have boomed, which in turn would feed many kārearea. Their role as seed predators may have influenced floristic composition as well.
Today, their populations aren't limited by food, but predation by introduced mammals. Forest degradation from browsing deer and possums also reduces habitat quality.
Protecting kākāriki karaka means reducing these pressures so they can once again thrive as part of the ngahere community. 🌱
📸 Photos by Sean McGrath taken right here at the Sanctuary
👉 Find out more about our Bird of the Year campaign and how you can get involved: Link in our bio
#KākārikiKaraka #BirdOfTheYear #BOTY2025 #BrookSanctuary
🪶🌿 What do kākāriki karaka eat? 🌸🍃
These critically endangered parakeets have a varied diet, taking insects throughout the year and supplementing their diet with leaves, fruits, flowers, and seeds when available. They’ll even disperse tiny seeds that survive passage through... their gut, such as those of kōtukutuku.
Rather than being tightly bound to the forest in the way that long-endemic species like kākā are, kākāriki karaka are more recent arrivals. They are an integral part of the forest ecosystem influencing species composition through seed predation and, historically, supporting native predators like kārearea (New Zealand falcon) when populations were much larger.
Today, their greatest vulnerability isn’t food, but predation by introduced mammals. Forest degradation from browsing deer and possums also reduces habitat quality.
Protecting kākāriki karaka means reducing these pressures so they can once again thrive as part of the ngahere community. 🌱
📸 Photos by Sean Mcgrath taken right here at the Sanctuary
👉 Find out more about our Bird of the Year campaign and how you can get involved: https://www.brooksanctuary.org.nz/bird-of-the-year-2025
#KākārikiKaraka #BirdOfTheYear #BOTY2025 #BrookSanctuary
🌿 Conservation Week 2025 – Brook Waimārama Showcase 🌿
Join us for an evening of ecological storytelling and discovery as we share the thinking, challenges and successes behind restoring the South Island’s largest community-led Sanctuary.
📅 Tuesday 2 September
...🕖 7–8.30 pm
📍 The Boathouse, Nelson
Speakers:
✨ Robert Schadewinkel – Brook Waimārama Sanctuary ecologist
Robert oversees the Sanctuary’s restoration to a fully functioning, resilient forest ecosystem. This mahi has enabled recent taonga species reintroductions, including kiwi pukupuku (little spotted kiwi) and tuatara. He’ll share insights into the Sanctuary’s uniqueness as the only fenced sanctuary with such extensive connectivity — 80% of its boundaries link directly to continuous native forest stretching from Nelson to Fiordland and the Marlborough Sounds. This connectivity creates extraordinary opportunities for landscape-scale restoration under Predator Free 2050, but also comes with challenges like pest pressure and dispersal.
✨ Katherine Chamberlain – 5 Minute Bird Count team
Katherine will present 16 years of bird monitoring data from the Sanctuary, revealing fascinating changes in birdlife over time and what these trends mean for ecological health across Te Tau Ihu.
This Conservation Week 2025 showcase is a chance to connect with the Sanctuary, gain insights into the challenges and thinking behind recent reintroductions, and see how long-term monitoring is shaping ecological understanding in Te Tau Ihu and beyond.
➡️ Find out more: https://www.facebook.com/events/1022351526498806/
#ConservationWeek #BrookSanctuary #NelsonNZ #EcologyInAction
🌙 Kiwi encounters at night
There’s nothing quite like a kiwi in the wild. This moment was captured just after one of our recent night tours — the forest quiet, then suddenly alive with the shuffle of little spotted kiwi (kiwi pukupuku).
Our last kiwi clip went viral (yes, ...even kiwi poo has star power 💩), and it’s been wonderful welcoming so many new faces to our page. If you’re here for more kiwi content, why not experience it for yourself?
✨ Night tours are the best way to be amongst kiwi pukupuku in their natural habitat. You’ll often hear their distinctive calls echoing through the forest, and along the way you’ll learn more about these remarkable taonga and the conservation work that helps protect them. Every booking supports the Sanctuary’s mission to restore and protect our forest ecosystem.
📅 Tours run weekly
➡️ Link in our bio!
#KiwiEncounter #BrookSanctuary #NightTours #BrookWaimāramaSanctuary #NelsonNZ #WildlifeExperience #ConservationInAction
🌙 Kiwi encounters at night
There’s nothing quite like a kiwi in the wild. This rare moment was captured just after one of our recent night tours — the forest quiet, then suddenly alive with the shuffle of little spotted kiwi (kiwi pukupuku).
Our last kiwi clip went viral ...(yes, even kiwi poo has star power 💩), and it’s been wonderful welcoming so many new faces to our page. If you’re here for more kiwi content, why not experience it for yourself?
✨ Night tours are the best way to be amongst kiwi pukupuku in their natural habitat. You’ll often hear their distinctive calls echoing through the forest, and along the way you’ll learn more about these remarkable taonga and the conservation work that helps protect them. Every booking supports the Sanctuary’s mission to restore and protect our forest ecosystem.
📅 Tours run weekly
🎟️ Spaces are limited — bookings essential
➡️ Book your adventure: https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/brooksanctuary/items/
#KiwiEncounter #BrookSanctuary #NightTours #BrookWaimāramaSanctuary #NelsonNZ #WildlifeExperience #ConservationInAction
🌙 Kiwi encounters at night
There’s nothing quite like a kiwi in the wild. This moment was captured just after one of our recent night tours — the forest quiet, then suddenly alive with the shuffle of little spotted kiwi (kiwi pukupuku).
Our last kiwi clip went viral (yes, ...even kiwi poo has star power 💩), and it’s been wonderful welcoming so many new faces to our page. If you’re here for more kiwi content, why not experience it for yourself?
✨ Night tours are the best way to be amongst kiwi pukupuku in their natural habitat. You’ll often hear their distinctive calls echoing through the forest, and along the way you’ll learn more about these remarkable taonga and the conservation work that helps protect them. Every booking supports the Sanctuary’s mission to restore and protect our forest ecosystem.
📅 Tours run weekly
🎟️ Spaces are limited — bookings essential
➡️ Book your adventure: https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/brooksanctuary/items/
#KiwiEncounter #BrookSanctuary #NightTours #BrookWaimāramaSanctuary #NelsonNZ #WildlifeExperience #ConservationInAction
Ngahere Neighbourhood 🌿🦋 Mānuka moth - Forest semilooper | Declana floccosa
This highly variable moth — sometimes called the mānuka moth — can wear anything from mottled browns to soft greys in impressively varied patterns, making it a true fashion chameleon of the ngahere. ...With a wingspan of 27–35 mm, its subtle patterns help it melt into bark, leaves, and lichen.
The caterpillars are not picky eaters, feeding on a wide range of native and exotic plants — from Muehlenbeckia to pines, eucalypts, and Douglas fir.
A decline of this species was observed during the 1980s, coinciding with the accidental introduction and establishment of common wasps from Europe. Forest semilooper numbers have bounced back. The forest semilooper had switched its emergence time from spring-summer to winter, possibly to avoid predation from wasps.
Photos by @chellikesplaaants and @henry.__.hart
#NgahereNeighbourhood #BrookSanctuary #ForestSemilooper #DeclanaFloccosa #NZMoths #NZWildlife #NativeMothsNZ
Ngahere Neighbourhood 🌿🦋 Mānuka moth - Forest semilooper | Declana floccosa
This highly variable moth — sometimes called the mānuka moth — can wear anything from mottled browns to soft greys in impressively varied patterns, making it a true fashion chameleon of the ngahere. ...With a wingspan of 27–35 mm, its subtle patterns help it melt into bark, leaves, and lichen.
The caterpillars are not picky eaters, feeding on a wide range of native and exotic plants — from Muehlenbeckia to pines, eucalypts, and Douglas fir.
A decline of this species was observed during the 1980s, coinciding with the accidental introduction and establishment of common wasps from Europe. Forest semilooper numbers have bounced back. The forest semilooper had switched its emergence time from spring-summer to winter, possibly to avoid predation from wasps.
#NgahereNeighbourhood #BrookSanctuary #ForestSemilooper #DeclanaFloccosa #NZMoths #NZWildlife #NativeMothsNZ
🟠 What’s the Difference Between Kākāriki Karaka and Other Kākāriki? 💚💛❤️
It’s easy to confuse kākāriki karaka (orange-fronted parakeet) with their yellow- or red-crowned cousins — especially at a distance. But once you know what to look (and listen) for, the ...differences are striking.
👀 Spot the difference
Kākāriki karaka have a lemon-yellow crown and a bright orange band just above the beak — not red like yellow-crowned or red-crowned kākāriki or a golden yellow in yellow-crowned kakariki.
They also have azure blue on their wings and rump patches that are orange (not crimson).
Juveniles are duller and slightly bluer in colour, and IDing them can be tricky — even experts struggle!
👂 Heard more than seen
These birds are famously hard to spot, often giving away their presence only with a soft chatter or squeak. They spend much of their time high in the beech canopy, only sometimes dropping low to feed on invertebrates or drink from a stream.
🌿 Rare and range-restricted
Once widespread, kākāriki karaka are now confined to just a few valleys in Canterbury and a handful of predator-free sites — including the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. They rely heavily on the pest-free beech forest habitat, like here at the Sanctuary.
🌟 Smallest and rarest
Of Aotearoa’s kākāriki species, kākāriki karaka are the smallest — and also the most endangered. Every vote helps raise awareness for their protection!
📸 Photos by Sean McGrath
🧡 Vote kākāriki karaka for Bird of the Year
#KākārikiKaraka #BirdOfTheYear2025 #KnowYourKākāriki #EndangeredSpecies #BrookSanctuary #BOTY2025 #BackFromTheBrink #NativeBirdsNZ
