Hurray for insects - December 21st

Thank goodness we don’t have sandflies here! Can you imagine a month or so working in the bush with those wee jobbies biting you every few minutes? It’d be enough to send out a ‘PAN PAN’ to the nearest passing fishing boat to get off the Island.
There are fleas though, everywhere. We do our very best not to get seabird fleas (which are misnamed as they will bite us too if there isn’t a seabird handy) by wearing gaiters in the forest to stop them going up our boots and into our trousers. You do sometimes get bitten though and it is never the very best idea to go anywhere near your sleeping bag in your outside clothes. No one wants to sleep in a flea infested sleeping bag.

We have some other huge, charismatic bugs on Rangatira, which I am slowly getting used to. There are wetas everywhere. Whenever I dig out a seabird burrow after accidentally collapsing it, there are usually several big wetas that scuttle off into the bush looking offended.

 Another weta lives in the tap of our outside water tank. Whenever we try to fill up a large pot of water, the weta gets washed into the pot. This one had the misfortune to be washed into the boiling water that I had heated up for my first shower here. I was terribly nonchalant and fished it out and chucked the carcass out into the bush. It can’t have been more than a day later when another one moved back into the same tap! Weta like living in holes, and a little used tap is a haven for them; until it all goes wrong of course. Weta apparently eat the carcasses of dead seabirds and as there are tonnes of dead seabirds throughout the forest, the wetas would be able to get themselves some good quality protein from this sideline.

The Chatham Islands have over 800 species of insects and on islands like this one they are a very noticeable part of the ecosystem. There are perfectly circular holes in most of the dead branches, which are bored by weevils. And Alex has already told you about the huge spiders which live here too. Thankfully I haven’t met those yet. I might not recover.

And finally, when talking about all things creepy and crawly I must mention the meal worms that we have brought with us from Christchurch. The birds love them and apart from observation and cunning, meal worms are the best bird-finding tools around. Meal worms pupate and eventually turn into beetles if they aren’t used as bird food first.

So, although some days I hate to say it: “Hurray for insects”.