When the cat's away, the mice will play, as the old saying goes. The equivalent for today is: when the people are away, how does nature play?
New Zealand, and much of the world, is in an unprecedented state with most people isolating indoors or making limited local movements. Our roads and centre cities are largely empty, keeping us safe, while brave medical professionals work hard to stamp out the Covid19 virus (if that's you, THANKS!!).
While we're self-isolating, how is nature reacting to our absence?
The short answer is that we don't know. This is a first for everyone, including researchers and the wild species living around us. You can help find out by keeping a watch on the nature in your neighbourhood, and sharing with you find on iNaturalist NZ–Mātaki Taiao.
It's also well worth putting our thinking caps on now: what species are most likely to change as a result of our self-isolation? This thinking can inform what species we focus our efforts on observing now, as well as after the Covid19 crisis has past.
I'm going to list a few things I've thought of below, while chatting with colleagues and other iNat NZ users. There will be undoubtedly be things we've not considered yet so please add your thoughts in the comments below.
That's a good thing if you're a species likely to get hit by cars. It's a bad thing if you're a harrier hawk or black-backed gull supplementing your food supply with roadkill. It will also be interesting to see if car-wary species gradually start to spend more time foraging along the road edge.
How are they reacting? I'm not sure yet. It looks like there's been a drop in gulls in central Christchurch, and there are no longer big groups of house sparrows around the city's cafes. Where have they gone? Have many of the gulls left the city for the farmland and estuaries? Have the house sparrows spread out through the suburbs?
Have you noticed any increases, or decreases, in these birds in your neighbourhood? As I write this, we've only had 14 observations of house sparrows and 26 gull observations made during #StayiNatHome. Don't forget to keep an eye out for what's going on with the house sparrows and gulls in your neighbourhood.
Are you seeing more wild mammals about? Thankfully, we're out of breeding season for these species, so their populations won't boom after a month of no trapping. Still, the longer lockdown continues, the more they'll benefit.
We're also coming into mushroom season and less lawn mowing will keep these mushrooms undamaged and obvious for longer across our cities. We've had 855 observations of 173 species of fungi so far during #StayiNatHome, which is phenomenal.
This could be an excellent time to document the mushrooms living in your neighbourhood. I'd wager that, with a little effort, you'll find fungi species that haven't been documented in your neighbourhood before. Maybe they'll be able to spread more spores this year too.
Josie Galbraith, at the University of Auckland, did some neat garden bird research, showing that the gardens that fed bread to house sparrows had fewer native birds like grey warblers (riroiro). Apparently, riroiro prefer to stay away from rowdy groups of bossy house sparrows.
If house sparrows scatter, will natives like grey warblers move in? We don't know, but it sure would be interesting to know if that's happening.
Now's the time to make regular counts of birds in your neighbourhood, and keep it going to see how those counts change after the end of lockdown when New Zealand tries to get back to normal.
If you notice something new happening in the nature of your neighbourhood, please post observations of it to iNaturalist NZ–Mātaki Taiao. That could be wild species you've not noticed before. It could be species that were common getting harder to find. It could be species interacting in ways you've not noticed before, or behaving in novel ways.
While we're #StayiNatHome, keep your focus squarely on supporting your whanau. In your spare moments, consider casting your eye about for the other species living in your neighbourhood, and think about how they're reacting to this strange time that we're all living through.
(And, seriously, I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments about other ways that NZ nature might be reacting to our country-wide self-isolation.)
Comments
Hi Jon, the thing I noticed most quickly was the clarity of the stream that runs through a park and reserve behind my house. Auckland streams are used for stormwater drainage and over 3 hectares of stormwater goes into this narrow stream. Obviously we haven't had a lot of rain, but with people not washing their cars as much, construction having stopped and less upstream pollution, the stream has become clear enough for the bed to be seen along its length within the park. It was enough that banded kokopu could be IDed in this part of the stream for the first time. https://inaturalist.nz/observations/40855230 I hope other freshwater systems outside of farming areas are doing better whilst we are all locked down. I wonder if the lack of sediment into the sea is noticeable too?
Thanks @ryvesie. That's an excellent point! I'd not thought about that.
I've read that a similar thing has been noted in Venice where the lack of boat traffic has stopped all the sediment being kicked up in the water. The clear water is then bringing cormorants in because they can now see the fish they hunt. I'm not sure how much of this is anecdote, and how much is backed up by data, but it sounds plausible.
You're right—I can see something similar happening on a smaller scale in parts of NZ with vehicle-related and construction-related pollution run-off into NZ streams. We should be paying attention to changes in our cities' rivers and streams.
very cool! Wish the app had notified me of this, only noticed now that I've logged in on the pc
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