#pycnoporus

The next stop was an overnight at the largest town in the West Coast region - Greymouth, with a population of 8,400 at last count. The area was first settled in the 1300s, but in the early nineteenth century iwi from the East Coast of the island had conquered the area to control the supply of pounamu (New Zealand Greenstone).

The Grey River is one of the short steep rivers that originate in the Southern Alps, and has managed to break through the coastal range. The area is also somewhat notorious for the katabatic wind known The Barber that flows down the gorge and through town, frequent flooding thanks to all the storms that blow in off the Tasman and get stopped dead by the Alps, and the number of shipwrecks on the sandbar at the rivermouth.

We had a short stroll around the estuary at sunset, but I didn't get many usable photos. The arse of the Weka that disappeared into the undergrowth wasn't particularly photogenic either.

Some of the species covered earlier, or from @purrdence's previous trip.

Pycnoporus is a genus of bright red bracket polypores with world-wide distribution, divided into species mostly by geographic region. This is Pycnoporus coccineus the native species from Australia and New Zealand.

Cinnabar Polypore (by Dendroica cerulea)