Hakarimata scenic reserve

Hello All,

Thought id give this blog thing a go...

So lastnight (Firday 22/10/2010) a friend and I went out to Hakarimata scenic reserve, just out of Hamilton (Ngaruawahia aera) North Island, New Zealand.
We got out to the bush about 7pm-ish sort of time, we went along the Waterworks track. Our goal was to get to the dam/waterfall before dusk ,so that we at least had some idea of what the track looked like etc before it got to dark - always good to scope a area out doing daylight before going at night (well i think anyway)

We got up to the dam/waterfall a bit quicker than we expected to (10-15min) So we took a bit of time to chill out and take some photos of the dam/waterfall :


Now the bonus about wearing waterproof pants and waterproof hiking boots is you can happily sit down/knee into the running water go give you a nice low angle (shots of me photographing the waterfall, Photos taken by Steve Reader) :





The waterfall was about 4-5m high, quite nice to sit up at the top and take photos looking down:


just off to the right of the path there was like a man made cave type thing, it went in for about 2m only about 1m high (so photographing things on the roof of this cave was a little tricky) but all over the roof of this cave there was 100s of cave Wetas, I tried to get a shot showing the large number of Wetas but It didn't quite work:


onces it got dark, the bush came alive, with invertebrates (heaven for me) didn't see as many spiders as I would of liked to, but the cave wetas and harvestmens made up for the lack of spiders.

I ended up shooting 4 species of spiders.
First one was a Female Scuttling spider (Cycloctenus spp) blending in nicely with the surrounding environment, these spiders are quick to run, So approaching them slowly and carefully is everything, making sure you don't break any sticks etc:


The next spider was a Large female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) The first one I saw, was in the middle of the creek sitting on the edge of a rock - I tried to get close enough to get a shot... end result was the spider runs off laughing, as i tripped over all the rocks losing my footing and ass planting into the creek (lucky the camera was all good) what i didn't realize was my phone had come out of my pocket and landed in the creek, I carried on up the creek a bit where I found a second Nursery web spider and manged to get some shots of her sitting on the water, it wasn't till i started to walk back down the creek that I realized my phone had fallen in the creek (lucky for me the phone was flashing) pick it up out of the water and dried it off and thankfully it still works... for now...

So here are some shots of a Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on the water:






Next spider was a Large Female Black tunnel web spider (Porrhothele antipodiana - pure black species) this one was about 3cm body - a large one! Sadly the 2 shots I got were not as nice as I would of liked...:





Now to the harvestmen!

I saw 3 different species I haven't photographed before, so they were a must! Now if im correct, the first 2 are males, the second one is a immature male, and the third one is a female... (could be very wrong)
first species




Second species



third species



Cave wetas/crickets











we also found some fresh water lobsters