Over the past year, I’ve been making more and more images of things that aren’t birds. I’m fortunate to work on many predator-free island where there are reptile and invertebrates in abundance. These are creatures that are largely absent on the mainland, present at low densities due to persistent munching by introduced mammals. Many of them are nocturnal – so doing seabird work is perfect for catching a glimpse of the many night creatures that call these islands home.

I’ve fallen a little in love with reptiles. I had no idea just how many species we had here in Aotearoa, and it’s been a fantastic new world to find myself in. The New Zealand Herpetological Society has just revamped their website with an online resource and identification guide here. You can find a bunch of my photos there (my favourites are the Poor Knights gecko and the Chatham skink). It’s like the NZBirdsOnline for herpetofauna!

There are many critters that crawl in the night. I have a soft spot for the many species of wētā that I’ve encountered – some are huge, some are tiny, but they’re all beautiful. Mercury island tusked wētā (Motuweta isolata) were once restricted to Atiu – Middle island, and were snatched from the brink of extinction by a captive breeding and translocation program. They’re now on several of the islands in the Mercury group (although they remain classified as Nationally Critical, our most endangered species of wētā), and seeing them charge industriously through the leaf-litter at night was a huge highlight of the seabird surveys we did there in September and February.

I really, really love weevils. Way back, on my first visit to Aorangi in the Poor Knights islands, I found two Turbott’s weevils (Anagotus turbotti) engaged in making baby weevils in a ngaio tree, and got some grainy photos so that I could identify the species. After that…I somehow never thought to look for them on Tawhiti Rahi. Or any weevils. Until this past year, when I realised that the patch of harakeke (flax, Phormium tenax) that we walk past on the track every day had the obvious notches of flax weevil munching. After that, I managed to spy at least one weevil every night on either the walk up or down the hill to our study plot – and finally cracked out the macro lens to get some photographs on a blustery rainy night. They have such beautiful golden patterns. Flax weevils spend their whole lives on harakeke or whararariki (mountain flax, Phormium cookanium), but on Mana island where flax weevils have been re-introduced from Te Hoiere – Maud island – they have thrived just a little too well and have killed the plants outright. This is a problem because the harakeke there is important habitat for Goldstripe gecko (Woodworthia crysosiretica) as well as other reptiles, and a food source for nectar-feeding birds.

Every experience gives me a greater appreciation for the entire ecosystem of the islands I work on. These seabird-nutrient-fuelled places are microcosms of what the mainland could be, if we manage our Predator Free 2050 goal, and if we make space for these creatures to return.