Thermal imaging at Tāwharanui
I do a lot of invertebrate photography at Tāwharanui Regional Park, I know there are lots of mice there but I have only ever seen one. On the first of February 2019 I took my friend Pieter (who has a fantastic thermal imaging camera) up to see if we could see them and anything else.
We saw mice straight away and counted nine from the start of the Ecology Bush Track (at Anchor Bay) to the boot cleaning station. Over the same distance we only saw three birds. Of the nine I think only two were more than 20cm off the ground with the highest one on a tree fern at chest height. The mice did not move much when we approached but stayed still. When we turned our torches on to see them directly with our eyes they were invisible, hidden behind a leaf or small piece of scrub.
The most interesting thing happened when I spotted a Puriri Moth crashing around to the side of the track, Pieter told me it would emit a heat signature and turn up on the camera, we tried it and it was clearly visible! Not as hot as a mouse but still visible. It would have been interesting to see if it was still visible after being still for 20mins or so.
