We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am.
Last week we had a cool, but dry day for the hike and drove up onto the high ground, along Bell Road and then on the side road to park not far past the Masck Farm road junction. Our destination was the north end of Dragonfly Lake where a small rocky bluff offers a very pleasant lunch spot. Some hikers looked in vain for edible mushrooms as the very long spell of dry weather probably left the undergound parts of the fungus, the mycelium as its called, almost bone dry.
Our native Rough-skinned Newt does prefer to have some moisture in it's habitat and the recent showers seem to have encouraged it to start travelling about in the forest. We came across one very tiny specimen that had ventured onto a dry gravel road on Saturday and I photographed it with human finger-tips to show just how small it was. I was surprised to learn that they can live for more than ten years, and the fact that they have a very toxic poison in their skin no doubt helps them to avoid being eaten by predators.
JD.
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