Ah, so much better taking photos with my new Pixel 2. And I found out this week you can do audio recordings, so have added my first audio recording.

I'm currently working on bird sounds. So many sounds in the forests I can't place, but quite a few I can already.

Great day yesterday doing pest line maintenance and getting to see lots of new fungi. And even better: by the time I was on the coach, everything was identified. Thank you very much great people here!

Have to work on my fern identification though. I wasn't sure I had identified the Tarawera properly, and indeed it was actually a Kiwakiwa. But joepb gae me a very handy tip: "The sterile, brown fronds at the centre of the plant make it a Blechnum." So that seems to be a general identification help, so will use that a bit.

Same for what I thought was perhaps a lance fern, but was actually the leather-leaf fern. Getting feedback like that is invaluable, pouring over books clearly doesn't work for me.

PS: just noticed something terrible: at least some locations are pretty random it seems, 15kms from where I took the photo. What did happen here???

Pirongia Summit trip was great, loved nature. Spotted my first Hen & Chicken fern almost straight-away! It's always great to be able to see things you have read up. I even got a Prince of Wales, but didn't recognise it at the time, but the great people at naturewatch spotted it straight away. It's just marvellous to be able to take photos and get the appropriate identification straight away, I just feel sorry these folks as they have to look at my poor photos. Not sure what to do about this, looking on the screen it looks focused, but often when I click it tends to end up very blurry. Must be delirium tremens :-)

I loved the mountain neinis, lots of them there.

There was one fern that occurred only at a particular location which I didn't take a photo off, but didn't see it anymore, should have. Frond was lobed, but not divided.

And I got a coprosma grandifolia, hadn't noticed that either. Have been reading up a lot on the Coprosmas and Pittosporums, very fascinating.

Made my first observations. Blown away that people are actually putting identifications on my unclear photos. This really may speed up my journey into plant identification.