Nah didn’t do the full thing, just went from Crofton Downs station to Mt Kaukau and back again. That way I wasn’t reliant on cars or needing people to pick me up / drop me off - which you kinda need if you’re going all the way to / from the Makara end

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Zealandia when talking about the return of native birds to the capital. It’s large sanctuary in the city suburbs that’s completely surround by a 1.8 - 2.2m (6.2 - 7.2 ') predator exclusion fence. This area allows native birds a space to thrive without rat predation. It’s been so successful that threatened birds are growing in numbers and returning to areas outside of the sanctuary - good example being the Kaka (not an owl but still superb) which seem to growing steadily in number in my area.

I’m lucky enough to have Ruru in my back garden. While I rarely, if ever, see them I do often hear them gently hooting throughout the night, and I love them for that.

I’m way under qualified to comment on the efficacy of the rat poison drops, but my impression is that they are generally seen as a necessary evil in the fight to protect native wildlife. There’s definitely a fringe, but vocal, anti 1080 (the most prominent poison used) movement, but that’s less rooted in environmental concern and more on conspiracy theories: 1080 activism: Going down the conspiracy ‘wormhole’

It is worth noting that poison drops aren’t the only tool employed. There’s been some massive victories in the Wellington region using trapping to eliminate rats (and other pests such as stoats) from a large area of the capital: Rats, stoats and weasels eliminated from Miramar

There’s a good Tom Scott video on the efforts going on to remove rats from the Wellington region: This is “impossible”, but New Zealand is trying anyway

Weird long necked dinosaur thing was exactly what I though too when I first saw it.

I’d never heard of these guys before, so cool! Here’s some info for those, like me, that may not know much about them: Peripatus / Ngaokeoke

The Long and Winding Road. Not sure which version though, I love the strings on the original record, but also really like the cleanness of the restored naked version

I use an extension called Stylus which allows you to inject css into sites. I have a general rule that overrides the font-family for pre / code elements. There’s a great community around it for custom styles for various sites - offering dark modes, decluttered views, alternative themes etc.

Great to find another Comic Mono user! It’s super easy to read. I’ve been using it in IDEs / Terminal for a while now.

I’ve even set up Stylus scripts to use it in GitHub and other sites as I find weird going back to the “normal” code fonts.