Movie Night

We had a great turnout for our movie night, featuring short films from award-winning filmmaker, Karthic SS.  

Watching Living Fossils, we learnt about the ancient peripatus, a type of velvet worm found near the Caversham motorway, and how Dave Randall has helped create habitat for them in his backyard. 

Beating the Odds showcased one of New Zealand’s rarest birds, the Southern New Zealand dotterel/pukunui. Southern NZ Dotterels are now only found on Rakiura/ Stewart Island, having disappeared from the South Island due to introduced predators. 

At the time of filming in 2018, just 167 dotterels remained. After years of conservation work, the population has fluctuated, and there are now an estimated 160 birds. They face predation from wild cats, as well as deer that can trample or eat their eggs. The film highlighted the ongoing efforts to reduce predators and monitor the dotterel population. 

Following Little Blues gave us a glimpse into the lives of little blue penguins/kororā on the Otago Peninsula, returning from their day at sea and heading to their burrows, along with the work being done on monitoring each bird using RFID technology. 

Sniper tells the story of how Leith Thomson recognised the need for a specially trained detector dog to help locate the endangered yellow-eyed penguins/hoiho, reducing the time and effort required for manual searches. We follow Sniper's journey to becoming the first detector dog trained for this purpose. Thanks to Sniper's impressive nose and skills, locating hoiho for monitoring and rescuing injured birds is now much faster and more efficient. 

A big thank you to Karthic for sharing his films and taking the time to answer our questions! 

📷Ada and Anja