A week ago, I went to tōtara with my classmates to learn about something called kaitiakitanga. At tōtara park, we used an app on our iPads that used an AI that could scan plants and identify them. I was able to scan around 75 there. You can also scan animals, insect, fungi, fish, and birds. The entire trip was around 2 and a half hours and I would say it was fun, albeit incredibly tiring. I scanned a tuatara and a red striped oil beetle. And I managed to scan one bird; the Eurasian blackbird. It looks something like this —-> 🐦⬛. My friend Joshua forgot his iPad so he just came with me. He helped me scan some plants and told some stupid jokes. I touched a plant and he said, “leaf him alone!” I told him it was a stupid joke, and he agreed, but he said it to everyone in a 10 metre proximity. Through tōtara park, runs a river called the puhinui stream. It runs for twelve kilometres, starts at tōtara park, and ends at the Manukau Harbour. In the beginning of this blog, I mentioned something called kaitiakitanga, which is all about being a guardian of nature. The puhinui is a huge asset towards care of the environment around it, and functions as a great link to Manukau’s heritage. The week after, we went to the botanical gardens, which went quite well. It was quite similar and we also used the seek app. We had a look at how the storm water thingymajigies worked. There were heaps of plants to scan and ended up reaching about 150 scans of different plants, mammals, fungi, birds and reptiles in total.
That one time I got reincarnated to go to tōtara park.
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