Speaking of Birds – Wild New Zealand – Part 1

Takahe

Speaking of birds, they had a lot to do with our second trip to New Zealand last December.

When we left New Zealand after our first trip in January 2015, we said that we’d like to go back someday. There were no particular plans of when or even if that would happen – after all, there is a very short wishlist of other places to go. I’m less inclined to travel far that often these days, so there has to be a pretty big draw to get me going.

That draw happened last summer when BBC aired a 3-part documentary on the geography and wildlife of New Zealand, with its very dramatic and stunning cinematography, narrated by the dulcet tones of native son Sam Neill. Wild New Zealand showed images of remote landscapes of mountains, fiords and waterfalls, and forests of tree ferns and other huge trees dripping with moss. Flightless birds thought to be extinct, the takahe, were re-discovered not all that long ago, deep in these landscapes and are now being protected. By the end of the series, I was in and went off to book a return visit.

We headed for Fiordland, the far southern part of New Zealand, to see these lands of waterways carved by glaciers over successive ice ages where mountains rise vertically from the water surface and stretch below the surface another 500 meters deep. This is land of water, of thousands of waterfalls tumbling down the cliff faces, fuelled by the rain. Our own temperate rainforest “Wet Coast” on the west coast of Vancouver Island, for example, gets 3 meters of rainfall a year. Pikers. In 2016 the coast of Fiordland saw 9 meters of rain.

Up close and personal with a waterfall. Standing on the stern of the boat, as it moved in close to the Milford Sound waterfall, I got totally soaked taking pictures. I’d take a shot, turn my back to wipe the lens, then swing round again to take another. There were only a few other sopping wet nutcases out on deck – everyone else was watching the show high and dry from inside. Later, I remembered that while my camera body is weather resistant, the lens I was using was not. Oh.

Human history is a relatively short one in New Zealand. First settled by the Maori from Polynesia around 1280 and later by Europeans in the 1800’s, these first settlers would find many unique birds in this faraway land including many that had lost their ability to fly. There were no mammals other than bats and sea animals, hence all these happy flightless birds waddled around with no predators in sight. That of course was to change with the human predators and introduced animals. Many natives bird species vanished, many still face extinction or are at risk and New Zealand conservationists have been seriously addressing the issue of the introduced predators – the rats, possums and stoats, using poison and traps to clear areas adjacent to the national park trails and in some cases, clearing entire islands, allowing the re-introduction through breeding programs and monitoring of birds at risk. New Zealand has a stated goal to remove these introduced predators by 2050.

Trying to redress the balance – one trap at a time.

In Fiordland we stayed just outside Te Anau, the town hub of the region, in a cottage on a hill with mountain views. Our landlord appeared surprised that we were staying for 5 days – apparently this is unusual as people tend to stay only a night or two at most on their way to somewhere else. The main draw here is a cruise on the Milford Sound, one of the epic fiords, but there is much more to experience if you just stay put and explore. My “rule” of staying in one place for a minimum of 3 nights serves me well. It was in Te Anau that I was able to get up close to the rare, previously “extinct” takahe birds and others at the Bird Sanctuary on the shores of Lake Te Anau, taking their portraits at feeding time.

Te Anau is also a start and end point of 3 of New Zealand’s Great Walks up through the forests and mountains of Fiordland National Park.

A big draw in this and other regions of New Zealand is hiking, not surprising, given this scenery. They call it “tramping” in New Zealandese. The sight of “trampers”, bent over with huge backpacks and dangling smelly shoes, is a common one. It is not exactly wild hiking, for the most part as the trails are well maintained and if you are not too fussed at listening to a bunch of snoring travellers, you can stay in one of the many staffed “huts” along the way. Or set up your own tent at these camp sites. Still, the rapidly changing climate can bring cold, wind and rain at any time of the year, and would make for a challenging multi-day hike through killer views and scenery. There are 500 km of trails and 60 huts and access is controlled by the necessity to make reservations if you do care to do one of these epic 3-5 day hikes – and reservations are taken months in advance.

I hiked the Kepler Track.