Well, this may be the first time I've used new improved Blogger, but I feel I may be moving on. I need comments, I need categories, and dammit I need RSS syndication.

Finally saw The Matrix: Reloaded this evening, which was better than I expected given the flood of negativity issuing forth from moviegoers. It's hard being a sequel. If you don't add anything new to the mix then you're just a rehash with better special effects, and if you do then maybe you should be a separate movie. I noted that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (one of the trailers) seemed like perhaps it was in fact also the same movie. Like teams on a racetrack: you know one's called McLaren and another's called Williams, but it's really all the same.

Anyway I notice we're picking on machines at the moment. Is there some discomfort in the shared unconscious about machines controlling us? It's true the toaster speaks to me when I'm asleep. "Insert fork insert fork . . . " At least it's not as foul-mouthed as the kettle.

Dear PayPal customer

I have a PayPal account and I just received an email saying that PayPal are undertaking a routine review, yada yada, please click this link and login. Here's the link: http://www.exme.us/~x/ (note that it's safe to visit but don't login). The thing with this page is that it's not PayPal. It's some other individual or organisation of a criminal persuasion (a Mr or Ms Role Acccount [sic]) who wants to steal my login details. Always check the URL! Also note they copied the secure site icon, but didn't bother about actually getting a secure site (no https://).

...But not just your login...they want everything! Enter some garbage into that form and check out the next page where they ask for your credit card number and expiry date. You're a bad bad person Mr/Ms Acccount.

Werner Herzog interviewed

On eating shoes, painting rats, hypnotising your cast, and other filmmaking quandaries.

Karearea

I walked up Mount Thomas yesterday. It rises directly from the Canterbury Plains at the edge of the foothills with 360 degrees of view. Inland, to the west: the snowy Puketeraki Range; north: the Ōkuku River and Range, and Mount Grey / Maukatere; and east: the sweep of the plains, across to the Pacific Ocean and the old volcanic cone of Banks Peninsula / Horomaka, and the swamp at its foot: my home, Ōtautahi.

As I was ambling along the tussock tops admiring the view and watching weather roll in from the west, a large dark bird swept up the hillside in front of me. It swung around and flew directly toward me, then alongside, its dark, yellow-ringed eye staring into mine. Moments later it disappeared behind me and back down the hillside, leaving me to peer down into the green valley hopefully. It was a New Zealand falcon / karearea. Great to see one — there are only a few thousand pairs.

Crazy people!

And here's a list of New Zealand's endandered (EN) and critically endangered (CR) species. Interesting to note there are a few upward trends. These few victories are generally the result of a lot of hard work by the heroic Department of Conservation workers.

I've been reading a book on extinct New Zealand birds. New Zealand is unique in that almost every ecological niche that would elsewhere be filled by mammals has here been filled by birds (a few have been filled by insects). Our only mammals are bats and they tend to eschew flying, to crawl vole-like on the ground. These birds knew few predators, and many lost their flight. Human arrival has driven many species to extiction. This book is enough to make you throw up your hands in defeat. But once you've done this for a minute of so, the message is clear: we can't afford to lose another species. We've lost so much already. Here's what we've lost (this is a very quick, rough count):

• All eleven species of moa, a ratite like the Australian emu
  
• our two species of eagle including the New Zealand eagle, Harpagornis moorei the largest bird-of-prey ever known (it thrived on eating moa).
  
• The New Zealand pelican, similar to the Australian. Goodbye pelicans.
  
• The New Zealand swan, a close relative of Australia's black swan, which has been introduced and is widespread.
  
• Two flightless geese.
  
• Five ducks, one flightless, including the merganser, a duck with a serrated bill
  
• A large harrier or goshawk
  
• Five rails (swamp birds)
  
• The New Zealand coot, similar to the Australian, which now breeds here
  
• The adzebill, a bird in a family of its own
  
• A snipe
  
• An owlet-nightjar
  
• Four New Zealand wrens (not really European wrens, the family is found only in New Zealand). We still have the rifleman. The bush wren was our most recent extiction, around 1972.
  
• The New Zealand crow. Similar to the rook, which is introduced here.
  
• A bittern
  
• The New Zealand quail, similar to an Australian
  
• The laughing owl
  
• A fernbird
  
• The huia, a strikingly beautiful wattlebird
  
• The piopio, or New Zealand thrush, our only bowerbird.
  

Here's a more through list and a reference to the book in question.

And here's a shocking stat from the 1997 State of the Environment report: "Of the original 93 kinds of birds known to have evolved and existed only in New Zealand, 43 have become extinct, with another 37 now on the edge of extinction." [ref]

The message is clear: Our forests, mountains and wetlands are halfway there on the road to silence. We need to do everything we can, at any cost. Anything less will not be enough.

Some are more equal than others

A petition calling for an enquiry into the controversial 1993 paedophilia conviction of Peter Ellis in Christchurch has begun circulating, but not widely: it's a petition by invitation.

For the last two weeks Dr Brash, Ms Rich, and Hood have targeted those in the legal profession, members of Parliament, the media, and academia whose signatures they felt "would carry weight and the Government would take seriously," Dr Brash said.

Shopping at Hornby Mall yesterday, Ellis said people kept coming up to him asking where they could sign the petition.

"I told them: 'I expect you're not famous enough'," he said.

Poker faces

would seem to be lacking in the White House administration. Last week Donald Rumsfeld mentioned that the Hussein regime (those sneaks) may have may have destroyed their cache of weapons of mass destruction before the war. So that makes things OK then, does it? But now Paul Wolfowitz, one of the key White House back seat drivers, admits that the war in fact was all about oil. We know that and you know that, but we're surprised you're letting us know you know that. Are you sure you don't want to take that back? It would seem the Guardian newspaper does. Here's their article. Yes, that's right: it's gone. Well, not to worry, truthout has a copy. While you're there, check out the article by Michael Penn's brother, Sean.

Saw a bus with the word "OTUA" on the glass door this morning. I wondered for a while why there was a Maori word on the door before realising it was AUTO from the other side. Makes me woinder how much I don't realise.

Monday we visited Hart's Creek on the edge of Lake Ellesmere. There wasn't much happening there but it was a weird place to visit. After 15 minutes walk through farmland a boardwalk wound through a flooded stand of bare willow trees — very Blair Witch. The hide was located at the edge of the stand where willows become lake. Lots of black swans and one single mute swan far in the distance. We stopped by the Rakaia River mouth on the way back where there were a few mute swans, as well as shovellers, grey teal, mallards, little black shag, gulls, white fronted terns, scaup, yada yada.

It seems the only way I can interact with the world is to build websites about it. I currently want to (and I've wanted to for several years but never had the time) set up a bird watching site where users can log sightings of birds. It would be a neat resource. I see seasonal graphs, I see "Birds in my area," I see "My backyard." Mmm, I'm dribbling.

Oh and I've started a CafeShops shop. Not much there as I'm still putting it together in between working on NZ Tramper, the next version of TerraForm, my day job, getting out at the weekend, writing this, home repairs, watching Buffy, and don't even mention the travelogue project. It's all in lieu of a life.

Internet Explorer: defunct

Slightly surprising news from Microsoft. Yet not surprising when you consider the browser has barely evolved since version 4 which came out in the nineties.

Spoonbill hunting

Apparently April and May is the best time to see royal spoonbills on the estuary. Yesterday being the first of June we thought we'd better go. Here's what we saw at McCormicks Bay Conservation Area:

red billed gull black billed gull black backed gull grey duck mallard paradise shelduck grey teal kingfisher

pied stilt white fronted tern pied oystercatcher variable oystercatcher white-faced heron royal spoonbill starling pied shag

We saw just four spoonbills but that was OK. Surprised at the numbers of grey teal — they seemed to be the dominant duck. Apparently flocks arrive from Australia (where they are the dominant species during drought there.

Onward, we headed for New Brighton and the final bend of the Avon, corner of Bexley Road and Bridge Street. A lot of black swans here, also shoveller, our fifth duck of the day. Finally: Travis wetland for more swans, paradise shelducks, shoveller, teal, as well as Canada geese, pukeko, spur winged plover, and scaup (the sixth duck).

Today: Harts Creek bird hide on Lake Ellesmere — apparently one of the best spots for bittern and marsh crake.

Here are some of the suspects courtesy Donna and Alastair.