News from the Valley

A NEW addition to the Valley Project team, a New Zealand Falcon, or kārearea in Te Reo Māori, can be found enhancing the entrance to the car park on North Road. This beautiful mural, painted by Bruce Mahalski from the Dunedin Museum of Natural Mystery signifies all of the amazing biodiversity found within the North East Valley and surrounding suburbs. His image is inspired by a photograph by Keith Payne. But, why the kārearea, and why is it so special? We have heard many stories from local community members remarking on the wonderful and fierce nature of the …

Another NEVology from local science communicator, Helen Jack AUTUMN IS certainly upon us and our lockdown wellbeing walks quickly moved from teddy sightings to mushroom spotting. The star attraction is Amanita muscaria, otherwise known as fly agaric, fly amanita or ‘the red ones with white spots’. Amanita muscariaI was terrified of being poisoned by toxic shrooms as a child, but in recent years I have realised how amazing and totally necessary fungus is. Fungi are literally in a league of their own, belonging to neither plant nor animal kingdoms but to their own fungi kingdom. Fungi don’t make food …

If you’re like me, you have square eyes by now trying to keep up with everything COVID-19. It's a full time job, let alone the ‘homeschooling’, the actual job, and the abundant garden produce that needs to be preserved right now. But let's back up the bus a little - what actually is this thing, how does it work, and what’s with all the names? I always knew there was a difference between viruses and bacteria, but I didn’t quite realise how different these germies were until Miss Jack made us watch a whole lot of YouTube videos …

“Did you know,” Mr Jack asked me a few months ago, “that there is a rare isopod living in Lindsay Creek? It is one of the only places that it is found.” “No! Wow, that’s cool!” I replied. Several seconds’ pause. “Um, what’s an isopod?” Which is a question I’m sure most of you have too. Isopods are a type of crustacean (crustaceans include things like crabs, lobsters, shrimps and krill) and they’ve been kicking around Earth for 300 million years. Their name comes from the Greek for ‘equal foot’, because their 14 tootsies are similar lengths. The tops …

As August rolls around with only the merest sprinkling of snow gracing our peaks this winter, we will have to make do with a story about snow, instead of the real thing. We’re going back 80 years to the worst snow storm of the 20th century – the Big Snow of July 1939 – when a series of freezing southerlies swept snow over the entire country. Even a very surprised lighthouse keeper at Cape Maria van Diemen at the top of the North Island reported snowflakes flying past his window! But the worst hit was coastal Otago. Flakes …