We were up before sunrise, as we wanted to visit Ulva island right at dawn, and hopefully see some bird life. The Māori name for Stewart Island is "Rakiura", which means "Glowing Skies." You can see why below, though it is also probably a reference to the Aurora Australis.
Our off-schedule taxi was 30 minutes behind the scheduled time, so we arrived after sunrise a bit. We still heard a couple pairs of kiwi surprisingly. Had we arrived earlier we may have had a chance of spotting them. Lighting was poor due to cloud and tree cover (Jen thinks the glowing skies refers to the fact that it never seems really bright here, just kinda "glows" instead), but we got a few photos.
Here is a pair of kaka. They are quite noisy. Flying and climbing about, using their wicked beaks to tear dead trees to pieces.
A very blurry photo of a red-crowned parakeet. They often wandered the forest floor, making this odd clicking noise. We had no idea it was a bird at all…
No birds here, just a fun tree trunk. Stewart Island has none of the beech trees which dominate most of NZ's forests. Instead podocarps such as rimu are much more common here.
The elusive saddleback. They are extinct from all but a few tiny rat-free islands. Nesting on the ground, they are easy food.
A very fat wood pigeon. They are heavy birds, preferring to use a rapid nearly-vertical ascent to slow their approach on landing. It gives them a kamikaze feel.
We were out of season for it, but in the summer sooty shearwaters and many penguins come ashore at night to nest. The penguins clambering up steep forested banks, the shearwaters dive bombing into bushes in near complete darkness.
Our ferry boarding passes. They stay like this a long time; they used to use them as post cards!
On the return ferry trip there must have been some fish in the area, as a large number of seabirds decided to camp out in our path.
This white-capped albatross, Buller's Mollymawk, was paddling along beside the boat. Check out the distinguished brow! It helps deflect wind and debris from their eyes during the endless hours of flight. Their nostrils are placed to provide them with a near perfect measurement of their true airspeed. A necessity with no references for land speed at sea.
A yellow-eyed penguin popped up for a break and some air.
They apparently have no trouble floating on their backs.
This albatross decided to land right next to the boat. Pretty sure it could have splashed us if it wanted. It just cruised right up doing a hairpin turn about the bow, and touched down just ahead.
Being mid-sized for most albatross species, his wingspan was only 6.3ft, and weight around 8lb.
Then a raft of blue (little) penguins appeared.
The prop from a sunken whaler.
Here is a paua tree.
A parting photo, and we were back on the ferry to the mainland.
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