The rain hath stopped...

Thankfully the absolutely rubbish wet weather we have had almost since I got home a week ago has ended!  It was over 30 deg C when I arrived home a week ago, hot hot hot the next day and then temperatures plummeted and the rain started.  We had more than 200mm of rain in most places around Hawkes Bay by the sound of it...good for the plants at our new section though!

So with all the wet weather it was a chance to catch up on computer work, getting all my images from the six weeks away backed up (I ended up keeping around 18,996 images from the Antarctic trips) so have deleted the chaff and renamed them all, imported them into Lightroom, and backed them up to another drive to send to the UK (as well as local backups).  I'm yet to keyword them all, but that will evolve over the next few weeks...hopefully!  Plus, there has been the grind of catching up on emails, long overdue tasks, and a little bit of sleeping in...

But today with the halt in rain and promise of sunshine it was back to the real world and over to Napier to finish off my bird survey contract with the local Hawkes Bay Regional Council.  I did the bird survey work down at Porangahau in early December before I left for Antarctica - see the blogs from that work - and so need to get the surveys on Napier Hill done.  The work is to assess the effect of possum control on bird populations, both native species and introduced, and so surveys done the year before control, will be compared with those conducted since.  The significant increases in most native species I recorded last year were great news to the Regional Council, who have since continued the control, and hence me continuing the surveys.

So the day started overcast and gradually got warmer, and it was nice to be out on the ground doing bird surveys again.  By late this afternoon the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and it was warm!  So another couple of days surveying the same area and it will be all done for another year.  Then time to do some helicopter surveys of one of the local rivers (for another contract) early next week, before flying to Auckland on 2 Feb to join the MV Oceanic Discoverer for most of February.  Phew...

The view from the 'office' today