Finding Fred & Hochstetters Frog Find!

My parents both work in the Whinary Reserve. They work for the Whinray Ecological Charitable Trust. They are trappers which means that they set a variety of traps on different trapping lines each month, they walk 429 hectares. Which is a lot of walking when the hills are very steep and especially when they can't walk every day for example when it's raining or when it's windy because there are way too many health and safety issues. They get paid from walking the Whrinary but, they are also Kiwi handlers and help raise young kiwi in the Motu kiwi creche which is all voluntary work. We also help Mum and Dad trapping when we are not at school. 

Today, however, we went kiwi searching to find a specific kiwi called Fred. Mum & Dad's boss Steve Sawyer had said earlier that week that Fred's transmitter had returned a mortality beep. Which means that the transmitter had either fallen off or the kiwi had died. We set off with the tracking gear, an aerial and a receiver. Using this we followed the direction of the loudest beep coming from Fred's transmitter. We made steady progress down the steep hill constantly listening to the beep. As we get closer the beep gets louder, soon we are very careful about where we step so we don't stand on a kiwi. Mum told us to STOP! It's around here somewhere, Mum moved aside a fern frond and Tim said 'What's that?' It was Fred's transmitter and luckily enough Fred was not attached to it. PHEW! We were all relieved that Fred was not dead. 

Mum said we now had two options, to go straight back up the steep hill we had just descended or scoot around to another gully and go hunting for a Hochstetter frog. We all opted for the Hochstetter frog. It was a bit of a walk through some tall ponga and steep slippery tracks. We arrived at the creek and began eagerly searching for a frog. After searching for about 30 mins we had found an awesome mossy rock ledge where we took a cool drink. Dad climbed up further and kept looking while we had a bit of a relax. Then Dad gave a shout "I found one". We quickly grabbed up our stuff and got the camera ready. Dad lifted the rock and there was a beautiful green Hochstetter frog. It was so cool!  

From here it was an epic hike up the steep hill through thick ferns taller than me! Some bush lawyer caught me and ripped at my leg, it hurt. It was such a relief to get to the clear ground at the top of the ridge.  What an awesome day!!!!!

P.S - Here are some pictures I took with my camera I got for Christmas last year. It's a Finepix S Fujifilm, it also has a 18.0x zoom. Here are the pictures...

                                       Fallen of transmitter, Yay!! At least the kiwi wasn't dead!

                                                                Me showing you the ariel 

                                        Me holding the receiver, the numbers 26 can be changed 
                                         to other numbers, for each kiwi has a different number 
                                         so that we can track them.

                                                                   Me finding Fred 

                                              

                                          Hochsetter frog FIND!!! These frogs are extremely rare. 
                                      Now rarer than GOLD! I was so lucky to find and capture this!