Exploring the Nina

By Tuiana (age 12)

Last Monday, I walked up the Nina Valley with my grandma, mum, and brother. We had only been walking a few minutes, when we came to the first swing bridge. When we got across there was a small shelter with an intentions book in it. I wrote down our intentions and then I had a look around. There was a billboard with information about the trapping that Hurunui College has been doing for DOC. It had pictures of endangered native birds on it. Then, there was a map of the different walks you could do that came off the main track. There was also the first trap. We walked on. There was a lot of mud on the path.

We stopped at a lovely swimming hole for lunch. We saw three fish. The river was freezing cold. It was also very deep. Along the way we saw a lot of fallen lichen on the track, so I began to collect it. I put it in piles by the side of the path to collect on the way back. There were a lot of different types of lichens.

I also gathered a bunch of different species of plants. I took them to the hut and sorted them into categories, and then I labeled them.

We saw a lot of different native birds on the way to the hut. There were riflemen, pīwakawaka miromiro, and bush robin. The robin in the photo below came out when we stopped for a snack.

On the way out, I checked all the traps we passed and some of them had rats in them. I also gathered up the piles of lichens that I had made on the way in. I am going to use the lichen I collected to dye some wool.