Don't Pay The Ferryman

Our trip to Scotland in late June and early July of this year lasted almost exactly two weeks. I mean that quite literally. We spent 14 days there almost to the hour from the time we crossed the Scottish border heading north to Glasgow to crossing the same line heading back south to England. That's about 336 hours of time, if you are inclined to do the math. Clearly, I was.

Of those 336 hours north of the border, we spent an awful lot of time on boats. Like an astonishing amount of time. We sailed (sailing here means a boat with a motor; there were no actual sails involved on this trip) on small boats with about 10 other people to massive boats seemingly capable of spending long hours at sea in all sorts of weather. We left the shore in search of puffins, gannets and other sorts of birds; floated past world famous whisky distilleries right on the shoreline; and roamed around the largest loch in Scotland (and largest body of water by far in Britain) in search of monsters that never bothered to have the common courtesy to surface right next to our vessel and make us internationally famous.

But of all the boats we set foot on during this trip, we spent by far the most amount of time on ferries moving us back and forth between the mainland of Scotland and the Hebrides, the string of islands on the west coast of the country. By my count, we spent about 16 hours either on these ferries or waiting to get on these ferries. And they were worth pretty much every minute of it, and not just because we needed them to take us and our trusty Honda Jazz to some amazing places. 

So I'm thinking the ferries deserve a post, right? I mean almost 5% of our total trip was spent on these things. I wrote a post about gannets and our looks at those birds lasted less than an hour. And to be completely frank, we probably spent more than 16 hours with the wait times. We are always early, after all.

Early morning sail from Islay to the mainland (top); and leaving Ullapool en route to Lewis (bottom).

So honestly, if we really wanted to go to the islands of Islay, Mull and Lewis (and we did), we pretty much had to take ferries to get around. Sure, we could have flown to each island, leaving our car at whatever airport on the mainland we flew from and picking up some sort of transport on the islands, but that seemed way more complicated. The ferries (all of which were operated by Caledonian MacBrayne, or CalMac for short) were an essential part of our trip that ultimately probably crossed that line from necessary commodity to beloved travel partner by the end of our time in the Hebrides.

Maybe "beloved" is a bit of stretch but there was for sure a special kind of kinship with the CalMac ferries that we picked up during our first week in country. Part of that love (or whatever it is) is the romance associated with certain types of travel. Most of our time getting away is probably spent in planes and cars, two decidedly non-romantic types of travel, unless we are talking about a seaplane or something like that (like the one that took us to Dry Tortugas National Park in 2014). But if we start talking about moving from place to place on a boat or a train, now we are talking about a mode of travel that definitely makes me happier and more relaxed. 

There is something about being on a boat on the open water (and to clarify, we are talking calm water here) that is relaxing and peaceful. Just the ocean or sea as far as you can see with specks of land in the distance marking your departure point and destination or just an island or shore that you are passing by. It's slow. It's serene. It's exhilarating being out on deck watching it all. It's amazing.

I know...it's not a sailboat. It's a ferry. It has a pace to it that's plodding and unexciting on the surface. And those big engines are working hard and probably using all too much energy to get us from port to port. 

But there is a throwback quality to ferries that appeals to me. They are not fancy but they are the ultimate short and mid-distance people movers on the water that have been around for a long, long time. It's even better if you get to drive your car on and off them (which we did on six of the seven CalMac ferries we rode). There's something cool about putting your entire vehicle onto a boat and just driving it off on the other side. For all the places I've ever been, I'm not sure I've ever driven a car onto a ferry. That sounds crazy but I think it's true. Although, not any more.

About that driving onto the boat, though. You definitely need to pay attention when you are doing it. Most of the ferries we took had a single level of parking for cars; getting on and off those was pretty straightforward. The ferry between Ullapool and Stornoway (on the Isle of Lewis), though, had a second level of parking in its hold on each side of the boat towards the exterior. The second deck was accessed by a ramp on each end that was raised after it was full and then lowered to allow disembarkation. 

We were unlucky enough to park on the upper deck both ways on that trip. I say unlucky here because they let the upper decks off last; it's kind of difficult to lower the ramps to the upper decks when there are cars below. But we were not as unlucky as one person next to us who managed to drive their front wheel off the side of the ramp down from the upper deck. I don't know how long that mess took to get sorted out because we got off as soon as we could. Just watch where you are driving when getting on and off ferries is the message here.

The ferry to Islay opening up their vehicle "door" (top); and driving on at Ullapool (bottom).

One of the great things about boat travel is there is generally enough room to move around some (or a lot) and there's usually some stuff to do. Exploring a boat this size can take some time and we are not talking about open ocean travel here so there's typically something to look at while you are going wherever the boat is taking you. Plus, if you need a meal, there's a full galley. None of this is like a plane or train where you are confined to a relatively small space for the duration of your journey. More room is better.

We did manage to see some pretty amazing things looking overboard, from a very fleeting look at some dolphins (or maybe they were porpoises); to lots of birdlife, like gannets plunging into the water in search of food; to seaside distilleries on Islay; to a few ruins or a lighthouse or two or maybe even a castle. There are some great views of Duart Castle on Mull from the CalMac from Oban to Craignure. Duart is not a medieval castle; it was re-built in the early 20th century. But you still get a great view from the water. People pay for tours to see these sights. You get it all on the ferry for free.

And that food? Pretty good. At least for breakfast. We actually ate breakfast twice on the ferries. I'd highly recommend the bacon and tomato breakfast sandwich. I'll also say that we got the sense that the staff working in the galley really cared. If your order wasn't ready at the counter then someone would find you in the dining room and bring it. I got the sense that the job is not viewed as a stepping stone to something else. We saw when we got back home that the BBC is making a reality series about life working on the CalMac ferries. HAVE to find a way to watch that when it gets released next year.

Oh, there's also a full bar on board in case you need a dram of whisky. Just not at breakfast time. Islay is well represented, appropriately enough.

Waiting for breakfast (top) and I'm counting six types of Islay whisky at the bar (bottom).

As I've already said, we pretty much had to take these ferries to get where we were going but there is actually a benefit to getting to some of the departure points. These places could be seen as a necessity to get where we really wanted to go on the other side of the water, but we used the opportunity to explore a bit and appreciate the drives that it took to get there, wherever there happened to be.

We left for Mull from Oban, which is a bustling ferry hub. There are boats coming in and out of there all day so it would stand to reason that there would be something going on. Our destination here was lunch, which turned out to be a bite to eat at the sketchily named Oban Seafood Hut, a green painted stall right on the water. The shrimp sandwich was great but I'd steer clear of the rubbery whelks. It's the animal, not the place of business. Who likes whelks? I can't imagine.

Our other two points of departure (Kennacraig and Ullapool) took us by some of the best scenery we drove past on this trip. The road to Kennacraig took us past the shoreline of the west coast of Scotland. The road to Ullapool took us through the highlands. Both were amazing drives and the best part was they were just a bonus. We weren't there to drive through spectacular scenery at all; they were just throw ins for free on a drive of necessity. 

Ullapool, where we departed to Lewis from, is a gorgeous little town of rowhouses lined up facing the harbor. I can't imagine what people in Ullapool do for work because it seemed to be utterly remote, but the place is really well put together. I suppose the ferry brings a lot of business to the town. We ate at the local chippy here before we boarded and found a couple of Scottish fish and chip shop delicacies that we had no concept of what they might actually be. We stuck to the fish but looked up the king rib and the red pudding later. Glad we got the fish.

Scenes from the ferries: Port Ellen, the islands on the way to Stornoway, and Duart Castle.

The longest ferry we took on this trip was between Ullapool and Stornoway which was two and half hours (or maybe just a bit longer on the way there) each way. The shortest we took was from Iona to Fionnphort on Mull which was all of 15 minutes long. The ferry from Iona was mercifully short but the ferry to Stornoway was probably the best ride we took, despite the length. The weather was perfectly sunny on that 7 p.m. trip and the islands we motored past were just so picturesque. It was almost worth the price of admission for that view alone.

Speaking of admission and despite the title of this post (I have to search for song titles, right?) we did pay the ferryman here. And before we got to the other side. These things are not cheap, particularly with a vehicle to pay for. We were whale watching (or more accurately staring at the water) in the morning on Lewis talking to a dude from Salisbury, England and complaining about the cost of the ferries. He summed it up well (and I'm paraphrasing here): the cost of taking a car on the ferries is not cheap, but if you want to get to what's on the other side, you just have to pay for it. He was right. The CalMacs got us to some incredible places. I can't imagine doing it any other way.

The menu at Deli-Ca-Sea Fish and Chip Bar, Ullapool. Red pudding anyone?

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How We Did It

The Caledonian MacBrayne ferries run all throughout the islands off Scotland's west coast, from Arran in the south to Lewis in the north. There are about 30 different routes in total and they operate at different times on different days of the week. Their schedules also vary by season. We were in Scotland right near the summer solstice so I assume the ferries were running much more frequently that time of year than during the winter months. Check their website for their most current schedules.

You will likely find that most routes require passenger arrival in advance of departure time, typically 30 to 45 minutes ahead of the actual departure. We were told by the hotel owner in Stornoway that we should not be late on these arrival times or else we'd risk being left behind. We planned on being early anyway (we are always early) but there were signs at some ferry terminals listing what happened to late cars. If I'm remembering right it was that you get put to the back of the line, but I suppose risk of being left behind might be real in some situations.

I like to think that I make travel reservations far in advance but I honestly almost got caught with no ferry reservation to Lewis. I bought ferry tickets on April 4 for that trip on June 25 and two of the three ferries to Stornoway that date and one the next day back to Ullapool were sold out. Fortunately, neither of the ferries we wanted to take were booked solid. Just don't count on last minute availability.

And not kidding about the breakfast. Or the BBC series. The food is good and I can't wait for that series to be released.

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New Zealand Birds (But Not Kiwis)

Over the past almost six years, I've taken some amazing trips into nature. Some of these trips have involved exploring the natural features of our planet like forests or glaciers or mountains or even white sand dunes. Others have focused on wildlife, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, the Galápagos Islands or here at home in Alaska (bears and bald eagles among others) and North Dakota (bison!). But I've never taken a birds-only focused trip. That is, until we went to New Zealand.

Now, I've never been much of a bird watcher. Call me unimpressed with the birds that have lived around me everywhere I've lived. Sparrows, robins and starlings? Can't go for these small, brown non-descript birds (I get that the robin has some red on it). Blackbirds and crows? Yawn! Sure every once in a while there's a cardinal or a hawk or something but the birds in suburban England, Connecticut and Washington D.C. never got me that excited.

But in the past couple of years, some things have changed about my appreciation of bird life on our planet. First, I saw my first in the wild toucan two years ago while eating breakfast down in Mexico. If there's a bird I love more than the toucan, I don't know what it is. The one we saw near Chichen Itza was right at the top of a palm tree so our look at it wasn't amazing. I have to find a way to get more of these birds in some future trips.

Then last year I made my second (of many, I'm thinking...) trip to the southern half of Africa and my eyes were opened. Not by the ostriches and the marabou storks and the secretary birds that I had on my must-see list but by the smaller birds: the fish eagle, the carmine bee-eater, the lilac-breasted roller and even, perish the thought, the vultures. These are some impressive creatures. I started to warm to the idea of bird watching. Enter New Zealand.

A variable oystercatcher on the beach of Ulva Island.

In the world of birdlife, New Zealand has a unique history so we actually planned several items on our itinerary specifically to watch birds. Crazy, I know! New Zealand was one of the last places on Earth to be discovered and occupied by man, meaning avian life on the two main islands and the various smaller ones around the perimeter were free to evolve without any interference from the world's number one predator and destroyer of species and the natural environment (that would be you and me). 

But New Zealand went one better here; there are also no land mammals endemic to any of the islands which make up this country, meaning the birds there were at the top of the food chain. And that led to some unusual things happening. Like birds there being the top dogs. Many, many species just got so complacent about the lack of danger that they just ditched their ability to fly. Heck, in some cases they lost their wings entirely. That's not to say that all birds in the country don't fly. Some certainly do and some are master aviators. But there are a ton that don't.

So where does one go to see birds in New Zealand? Well, seemingly anywhere you want but there are enough sanctuaries scattered throughout the nation that you are bound to be close to at least one. I'd suggest you go and see what this country has to offer. Even if, like me, you've never even been interested in something like this. There are no more 12 foot high flightless moas around (the Māori took care of wiping them out) but trust me there's a lot that's interesting. Maybe by the end of this post, you'll want to go find some of these things too.

This is the only kind of Moa you'll see outside of a museum in New Zealand these days. Good stuff!

Our bird watching itinerary took us from north of Auckland to south of Invercargill, meaning we pretty much covered all the way north of the north island to all the way south of the south island and many parts in between. 

It seems like the appropriate place to start when talking about birds in New Zealand is on the ground with maybe the country's most famous avian resident, the kiwi. I'm not going to do that because I've already written an entire post about our epic night quests to find these funny birds. But there are plenty of others that can't fly like the takahē, the pukeko and the weka. And yes, there are penguins, but we'll come back to them.

The motto of flightless birds everywhere. Rotoroa Island.

I can't imagine how scary it would be to be a flightless bird evolving in peace on your own private island (well, with other birds I guess) and then having some large biped bring over a bunch of rats, dogs, stoats, weasels and pigs that will seemingly systematically hunt you and your chicks and your eggs down for sport or a quick snack. And that's not even considering the bipeds might just kill you out of boredom. There is absolutely no way you can possible defend yourself against that kind of attack. You'd need another several millennia to evolve again. The problem is you don't have that amount of time. Not with a stoat on the hunt in your neighborhood.

There used to be nine species of flightless moa on New Zealand. Go to the Auckland War Memorial Museum and you can see skeletons and reconstructions clad with emu feathers on some of them to get an idea of their shape and size. There is no accurate record of exactly what these birds looked like. By the time people with an interest in preserving that kind of record got to New Zealand, the birds were all gone. I'm sure there are probably other species that perished along with the moa. Those that survived were either lucky or fast or isolated or cute enough that people started caring about that they might be destroying before it was too late.

There are two critically endangered species of flightless birds in New Zealand: the kakapo, a comical looking flightless parrot (which we did not see) and the takahē (which we did). Want to find either of these birds in person? Get off the main islands, because all the known specimens are now isolated to predator-free islands off the main coast of New Zealand. 

It is likely that there are fewer than 200 living kakapo today but at one time, the takahē wasn't so lucky: it was actually declared extinct in 1898. I guess some folks refused to believe this declaration, figuring that New Zealand was unexplored enough that there might be one or two last ones out there. They were right; 50 years after the last known member of the species died, a group was found in the Murchison Mountains in Fiordland National Park. All 347 alive as of October 2017 are descended from this single group. 

Takahē, Rotoroa Island.

We were lucky enough to see a family of four takahē roaming about Rotoroa Island, which is located in the Hauraki Gulf north of Auckland. They stand a little taller than knee-high when fully grown and have this gorgeous iridescent blue-green plumage and red bills. Apparently they pack quite a bite according to our Rotoroa guide, Toni, who's had the pleasure, and they also seem totally unafraid of people by our interaction with them. It's easy to see why they might fall prey to an animal looking to do them harm. We feel fortunate to have seen more than 1% of an entire species in one day. Think about that...

The takahē definitely owe their survival to luck and isolation (the kiwi probably fall into the cute enough to care category). One of the other birds we found on Rotoroa, the weka, probably owes its existence to adaptability, healthy breeding (up to four broods of chicks per year!!) and speed. Weka are not as remarkable physically as the takahē, sporting speckled brown feathers on a two foot long body, but they are for sure fast. We were warned of the weka's curiosity and penchant for theft when we landed on Rotoroa and seeing some around the island I can believe their speed did enough to keep enough of them alive when they didn't have the Department of Conservation looking out for their welfare.

Weka, Rotoroa Island.

If you are looking to find some birds that actually fly, I'd recommend a trip down to Ulva Island south of the town of Oban on Stewart Island. Here you'll find weka but you'll also find plenty of birds that actually use their wings to get airborne. It's a quick ride on a water taxi or ferry and we spent the better part of a day from early morning to mid-afternoon exploring the 3-1/2 hours of trails on the island (the Ulva Island guide available for $2 at the dock measures the trails in minutes, not miles). 

So what kind of birds can you find on Ulva Island? Well, it all depends on where you are. Spend time on the beach and you are liable to find orange and black (all the way down to the eyes) oystercatchers poking around between the rocks in search of food. You might also hear (and you are much likely to hear before seeing) the whooshing sounds made by a New Zealand wood pigeon or two (or three) trying to get the attention of a mate. These are the biggest (and likely most attractive) pigeons I'd ever seen in my life and their mating ritual, which involves flying noisily about maybe 10 feet above the forest and then seemingly falling straight down into the woods like bags of wet cement was the strangest way I've seen to garner the attention of the opposite sex. Although we humans do some pretty odd things too.

But if you want to get a good look at an incredible array of gorgeous species, most of which are about impossible to photograph, head into the woods. We missed out on good pictures of fantails, tūī and saddlebacks, although we got blurry ones of the latter two. These things move too darned fast and won't sit still for us tourists. What are they thinking?

New Zealand wood pigeon. That is not a small tree. These things are bigger than your average pigeon.

I'm disappointed we didn't get even a reasonably bad picture of any of the many, many fantails we saw on Ulva Island (in addition to the ones we saw on Rotoroa Island and in Te Anau). While not brightly colored like some other species we saw, these birds as their name suggests are able to spread their tail feathers like a fan to draw attention to themselves. For me, they were one of the enduring images on New Zealand. Unfortunately, they flit from branch to branch so quickly that it's impossible to get a camera lens on them. I need to be a better photographer. 

But we did get some great looks at some parrots and some parakeets and that was worth missing out on a good picture of a fantail here and there. Parrots, you say? Aren't those birds found in the tropics, which New Zealand and particularly Ulva Island at almost 47 degrees south latitude (the tropics end at 23.5 degrees), are most definitely not? Well I'm sure they are but New Zealand boasts three species of parrot as well. We saw the kea on our trip to Milford Sound scampering up our car windshield. On Ulva Island, we hoped to see the kãkã, a mostly brown parrot with hints of red and orange on the head. 

And see them we did. They are all over the place, sometimes in twos and threes in the canopies overhead. The trees admittedly make it difficult to get a good look at these birds because they tend to stay in the highest branches which makes you look about straight up through tens of different limbs to see a darkish colored bird clambering about a long way from the where you are on the ground.

But stay after it and you might find one from the right angle on one of Ulva Island's paths to get a great look and some good pictures. We managed to do that with the bird shown above, who we watched clamber about the branches of trees for about 15 minutes until he or she decided to stop and strip some bark off the limb above, presumably in search of food. The lighting in the back of the kākā almost makes it seem like I've pasted the bird into the photograph but that's not true. Thank goodness for the fantastic camera that we brought with us. The Nikon COOLPIX P900 we bought a couple of years ago continues to pay dividends.

This is the first trip I have ever taken where I've seen parrots in the wild (and yes, we also saw some parakeets on our day trip to Ulva Island) and while the kea and the kākā do not have the colors that some of the more famous parrots from Central and South America, it was something I wouldn't have expected to see this far south on the globe. Need to make sure I make a note to see some of their cousins on a future trip, right below the toucans on that same list. 

New Zealand parakeet or kākāriki, Ulva Island.

If you make it all the way down to Stewart Island and Ulva Island, I'd suggest one more bird-watching trip and that's to hop in a boat and head out to sea a little. There are some pretty impressive birds out there on the right sorts of days.

I've seen plenty of seabirds on any number of trips out to watch whales or on ferries or fishing boats (I was way younger when that happened) or even on a massive cruise ship off the coast of Alaska and Canada. Heck, I've even seen plenty of them from the shore in many locations including most recently off the coast of Washington state. But I've never seen anything like we saw off the coast of New Zealand this past March.

All told, we spent about 90 minutes way out on the ocean off Oban in a small boat with a skipper, two other passengers and a giant orange bucket of chum. No, we were not out searching for sharks or something like that but we were looking for something with a voracious appetite. We also deliberately went on a windy day because the windier it is, the greater the chance of seeing some of the largest birds on our planet: albatrosses.

Not an albatross. Two shags on the way out to find the albatrosses.

New Zealand was not the first place on the planet I'd been where we had the chance to see an albatross in person. There are a species of these birds in the Galápagos Islands but unbeknownst to us when we booked that trip they are only found on one of the islands. And it wasn't one of the ones we were visiting.

There's a romanticism to the life of an albatross. I'm sure some of my personal fascination with these birds comes from one of my favorite poems ever, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the protagonist of the tale shoots and kills an albatross, a traditional bringer of good luck, with his crossbow and brings ruin upon his whole crew and himself. I was pretty sure we were in for none of that on our couple of hours ride out of Stewart Island.

Outside of the mythology surrounding Coleridge's slain albatross, these creatures are the ultimate ocean flyers. They can stay for months out on the open water, flying as much as 100,000 miles or more in a single year. Basically when they are not breeding or raising chicks, they are in flight or at rest on the open ocean. And that's over the course of 40 plus years for some individuals, meaning over a typical lifespan, they can travel 40 million miles or more. And they are enormous. Royal albatrosses can reach wingspans of about 12 feet.

I've been on a number of nature trips where the conventional wisdom was that we would see tons of whatever type of animal or bird we were hoping to spot and found instead pretty much nothing. If there's a bird that symbolizes this sort of futility, it would be the flamingo, a bird I've chased on three continents without a close look at the species in mass. It would not be that way with the albatross this past March. After all, we had a bucket of chum consisting of some choice blue cod scraps. What could go wrong?

All eyes on the chum. 11 albatross waiting for a free snack. There are others off camera.

One of the things albatross have come to realize is that where there are boats, there are fish. So they have a habit of finding fishing boats and following them hoping to snatch their catch or benefit from the discarding of the undesirable (to humans) fish parts. There is every chance the boat we were on has been and is used for fish so naturally we drew some attention from a couple of birds. But once we stopped the engine and started tossing fish parts into the water, we drew a pretty good sized crowd.

I hate the notion that I am participating in any activity that turns wild animals into beggars but let's face it, that's pretty much what I did on this day. I guess we fed a good number of birds but we also did it to get a close up look at them, including the way they squabbled over the fish thrown into the ocean.

The albatross we saw that day were primarily lesser albatrosses or mollymawks, although we did see maybe one or two Buller's albatross. The mollymawks are not the giant albatrosses we had hoped to find but with a wingspan of about six to eight feet they are not tiny either. When they are at rest on the ocean, these birds are about the most serious looking, well put together animals out there. There is not a feather out of place on their entire bodies, but particularly on their heads. It's almost as if they have been made up super precisely. The eternally furrowed brow and the horizontal line each bird has on the sides of their faces almost makes it seem like their beaks are held on with string which has made an indelible mark on the birds' heads. They also all look exactly the same, although I'm sure all humans look the same to the albatrosses. 

Is this a serious face or what?

But we didn't travel all that way to see an albatross sitting on the water. We wanted to see them fly. And when they did it was truly amazing.

Our boat was followed by a number of different species of birds that morning. After all, it wasn't just the albatrosses that wanted a free meal. Some of these birds, like the shags and cormorants and gulls, worked hard to keep up, flapping their wings furiously to keep pace with the speed at which our engine was propelling us through the water. The albatrosses cruised, barely moving their wings while managing to easily outpace any other bird trying way harder than they were.

This was truly amazing to see. Sure there was a wing flap here and there with the albatrosses but by and large, they floated on the wind in a way that was embarrassing to pretty much every other species of bird out there.

Floated isn't really the right word because it's not like they hung in the air in one spot. They dove and soared closer and further from the water and sped up and slowed down as they wanted to without seemingly moving their wings at all. Now I'm sure that's not quite true. I am positive there were minor adjustments imperceptible to me, that took advantage of warmer and cooler air and strong and weaker currents, or something like that. Their bodies are so extremely well adapted to live in the air on the open oceans. At one point we watched an albatross chasing the boat for what seemed like five minutes (but was probably about three) and the bird didn't flap once. He (or she) just hung and followed. Fast.

If the wind had been stronger that day, maybe we would have seen some larger birds. While the albatross is a gorgeous bird in flight, its landings and takeoffs leave something to be desired. When you get up to 12 feet of wingspan it's pretty much impossible to take off from the surface of the ocean without a pretty strong gust of wind. We were told it would need to be much windier to make the largest albatrosses come close enough to get some free fish. Or we'd need to go much further out to sea.

Before I close this post...a word about penguins. Actually much more than one word. If there was a flamingo of this New Zealand trip, it was the penguin. And you know that doesn't mean anything good.

Yellow-eyed penguin. The one we saw. And eyes closed of course. :)

We had high hopes in the birds department for this trip. I hope that's obvious. By and large, they worked out well. Kiwis? Check! Flightless (land) birds? Plenty of those. Parrots? Yep, two of the three available species sighted. Wood pigeon? Didn't know there was a pigeon that big but yes, got it. Albatross? Very happy with the results. We just needed a few penguins here and there. And by a few, I mean a lot. Like tons. Expectations too high? Maybe. Thinking big with nature doesn't always work out.

There are a few species of penguin living in New Zealand, predominantly the little blue penguin, the yellow-eyed penguin and the Fiordland crested penguin. We visited Fiordland. We didn't see penguins.

Stewart Island was the furthest south we went in New Zealand so we figured we would have the best shot at seeing penguins there so we asked around when we arrived: where do we see these things? 

The answer in the town of Oban from everyone that we talked to (and I really do mean EVERYONE) was that you can spy little blue penguins returning from their day of fishing at dusk down by the town dock. It sounded like a sure thing. We spent three nights on Stewart Island at a hotel not far from the dock so we spent every evening from anywhere from an hour to 30 minutes before dusk to when we couldn't see anything any more alternately scanning the harbor and staring at the rocks near the shoreline looking for any sign of penguin activity. 

Know how many penguins we saw down at the town docks? Zero. And we weren't the only people down there. There was a crowd anywhere in size from 10 to 20 people each night. And nobody saw a thing. We are convinced the entire permanent population of Oban watches and laughs at all the tourists each night when they send us all down to the town docks. 

Penguin watching. Or more accurately not penguin watching.

Our last shot at penguins was our boat ride that was so successful with the albatross sightings and legitimately we did see some penguins. Like seven or so. At a great distance. Am I disappointed? Yes. Do I have any right to be? No way. Absolutely not!

Now admittedly, we did see two different species of penguin in those seven or so individuals: one yellow-eyed penguin and about six or so little blue penguins. The yellow-eyed penguin was a solitary individual standing on a rock with his eyes closed. Not that we were close enough to see the yellow eyes anyway, but I'm taking our captain's word for it on this species identification. The picture is above. He looks fluffy because he's molting. I assume the rest of the family was out fishing.

And the little blue penguins? Just heads in the water while they were out in the ocean, alternately visible and then invisible as the waves rolled and the boat turned. Never saw a whole one in the three days we were down on Stewart Island. The best look we got at these birds is shown below. The look was so poor that I had to post a picture with a piece of my finger in the upper left corner. 

Two little blue penguins.

I shouldn't complain like this. I know how fickle and unpredictable nature can be and I've said so many times on this blog. 

We came to New Zealand to see birds and we obviously saw tons. It is rare that I include 16 pictures in a single blog post but this one has that many (admittedly one is of a glass of beer) which I think is a testament to the quantity and quality of bird sightings we had. And I had to leave some pictures on the cutting room floor. We saw pretty much everything we wanted to see in New Zealand except for tons and tons of penguins. And even then, we did see penguins. By every account this trip was fantastically successful from a bird watching standpoint. 

I'm not sure when the next bird watching trip is. It certainly isn't likely to be in 2019 with our trips for the rest of the year planned. But one thing is for sure: what started in Africa got stoked here a little in New Zealand and I now have one or two more birding trips in me I'm thinking. Got to get some more toucans at least into my future. 

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How We Did It
Our birdwatching activities in New Zealand ranged over the entire country but were pretty much concentrated in two spots: Rotoroa Island and Stewart Island. I've already detailed how we got to Rotoroa Island when I wrote about tramping in New Zealand so I'll refer you to that post for how we did it.

We stayed on Stewart Island for three nights which made our trip to Ulva Island and our morning albatross-watching trip convenient for us. We took the Ulva Island Ferry over to Ulva Island first thing in the morning (at 9 a.m. if I'm remembering correctly) and took the 2:15 p.m. ferry back which gave us about five hours on the Island itself. I'd say that was about the right amount of time over there. If you go over lunch, take your own and bring everything back with you; there is no food for sale on the island and you shouldn't leave any trash over there. The Ulva Island Ferry leaves from Golden Bay. Check the Stewart Island website for the latest schedule and cost before you go. There are precious few places to buy lunch to go first thing in the morning but the Four Square grocery store in town sells pre-made sandwiches.

There are also water taxis available from Stewart Island if you want to go on your own schedule. I can't recommend those because we didn't take one except as noted below.

For our albatross and penguin (barely) watching trip, we booked ahead before our arrival with a company who cancelled the trip on us due to weather. Or more accurately said they were thinking about cancelling and then never texted us as they promised. We switched to Rakiura Charters and booked their half day Pelagic Bird Tour which was outstanding. Everyone we interfaced with at Rakuira Charters was fantastic and our captain, Mack, took great care of us while we were out on the water. I can't say enough good things about this company. The cost of the tour wasn't cheap, but then neither is any other tour on Stewart Island. If you need a water taxi to Ulva Island, Rakiura can take care of that for you also.

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The Bird Is The Word

Standing in the middle of a grass field with no lights at about 10 p.m. on a Tuesday evening seems like a strange thing to be doing on vacation but that's where we were. All seven of us. Standing dead still trying not to make any noise, although the morepork (think: owl) in the distance hooting away didn't seem to be understanding the rules of the game. It was just about five minutes earlier that we passed through the quarantine gate and into this particular field because we just weren't finding what we wanted outside the fence. Pretty creepy and sketchy stuff if you ask me.

Now, no lights isn't exactly accurate. There was a quarter moon shining somewhat brightly and there were what seemed like hundreds of stars in the sky including Orion blinking high up above us and the Southern Cross less visible but still there down towards the horizon. It was a similar picture to what played out the night before up at the airfield. No quarantine gate on Monday but we did just open up the airport's "no access" gate and drove on through like we had the right to be there and started poking around in the high grass with our red light flashlights (or torches, if you will). Pretty impossible to see without them after all although it's not all that bright with them.

Monday night the company for our mission was one larger, but the goal was the same: find a knee high (at most) ball of feathers weighing all of six pounds when fully grown. That's it. It's not a pest and it's not really threatening to us and we weren't out there to kill it or for sport or to gather food. All we wanted to do was get a look at one. And maybe follow it for a bit. Just one kiwi bird is all we wanted. Rare? Sure. But if they weren't rare this wouldn't be worth it. We'd come a long way and invested a good amount of money to get there so we were clearly serious about what we were doing. This had to pay off. Had to!

Quarantine sign: keeping rats out and away from kiwis and other birds not able to withstand an attack.

The where in this whole quest was Stewart Island, the third largest island of New Zealand and the only one other than the largest two that stands any sort of chance of showing up on an average sized map or globe. It's an island with a single town (Oban), 98% of the land devoted to a national park and about a 50 to 1 kiwi bird to kiwi human ratio. If there's any place in the country that you have a good chance of spotting one of these birds, Stewart Island or Rakiura (as it was called by the Māori) is it. 

Oh, and it's all sorts of out of the way of everything. We had multiple New Zealanders tell us that they had never been there when we told them we were going or had been. I feel lucky knowing that. But it took some effort to get there.

Stewart Island was the second to last stop of our trip. We'd landed in Auckland and bounced between Rotorua and Wellington and Queenstown and Fiordland National Park by plane, taxi, light rail, smaller plane, boat, bus, car and even smaller plane to get there. We'd placed all our expectations and the majority of our allocated trip funds into this one place. When I wrote earlier this had to pay off, I meant it. No way would we be happy coming all that way to strike out and not see New Zealand's most famous natural resident. No way could we go home without seeing a live, in the flesh kiwi.

Truth be told, we cheated a little bit here. Yes, we may have focused on Rakiura (it means glowing sky in Māori) as our great hope to see a kiwi bird, but we did have a safety net which we'll get to in a few paragraphs. You can call me overly cautious or accuse me of spoiling the excitement of searching for one under the stars (it didn't spoil the excitement for what it's worth) when we get down to that point in this post but we made darned sure we'd see a live kiwi earlier in the week. I don't like to be disappointed. What can I say?

Of all the largish reasonably habited land masses in the world, New Zealand perhaps remained isolated from human contact the longest. The first Māori settlers arrived from elsewhere in Polynesia in the second half of the thirteenth century and European explorers didn't "discover" the islands until 1642, almost 400 years later.

What the Māori found when they arrived in New Zealand (or Aotearoa as they called it) was likely a forested landscape filled with unique species of birds and zero mammals. Well, zero land mammals anyway; there were some bats. And because of the lack of mammals to prey on the native birds and particularly their eggs, the birdlife on the islands had evolved to be significantly flightless. After all, if there are no predators at all on the surface of the Earth, why bother flying any more? Several species of moa (now all extinct), the pukeko, the takahē and the kakapo were just some of the strange land-bound birds found by the Māori. Oh, and of course, the kiwi.

Man changed all that and quickly. The Māori hunted the moa to extinction. They also brought pigs and rats, as did European settlers after them. When rabbits introduced by white men started multiplying beyond reasonable numbers, they introduced stoats, ferrets and weasels to kill the rabbits. Pigs eat bird eggs. But then again pigs eat everything. They are also and fortunately not necessarily equipped to get into all sorts of birds' nests. Burrowing protects from pigs. But rats? Nope. Stoats, ferrets and weasels? For sure not. All of a sudden these predators found themselves with foods they love right on the ground level and a native population ill-equipped to fight them. 

Native bird populations started to decline. Fast. As of October 2017, there were an estimated 347 takahē in the world (this after they were already and accidentally declared extinct). The kakapo wasn't so lucky as that (although it hasn't been declared extinct yet); their numbers dwindled down to double digits and likely number between 100 and 200 today. There are way more kiwi than takahē or kakapo but that doesn't mean they are not endangered. About half of all kiwi eggs laid are hatched and chicks hatched in the wild have a 5% survival chance in the first six months they are alive.

Today, the kiwi are getting a helping hand. There are kiwi hatcheries spread around New Zealand including right across the road from our hotel in Rotorua (called, appropriately and simply enough, The National Kiwi Hatchery). So knowing we wanted to see a kiwi in our two weeks in country, we had to stop by this place. It was right next to our hotel, after all. 

I know, it's sort of cheating. But we HAD to see one.

Our first kiwi sighting. His name's Bennett. And, yes, he is in a box.

We try our very best not to visit zoos, aquariums or aviaries or anything like that sort of thing but we figured The National Kiwi Hatchery was likely doing some good to save a species, so we made an exception. We are glad we did, although seeing the mercifully small enclosure that their three permanent resident kiwi live in was admittedly very discouraging.

The National Kiwi Hatchery is located within the Rainbow Springs Nature Park. We didn't spend much time in the zoo-like part of the Park, opting to spend all our quality time within the Hatchery itself. This is definitely the place to spend your time. And if you are determined to take a picture of a live kiwi while you are there, you have to do it in the Hatchery. But only when you are told it's OK.

I mentioned earlier that 95% of the kiwi hatched in the wild won't make it six months out in the big bad world. When they hatch, they are pretty much left to themselves. They are genetically programmed to hunt for themselves as soon as they get out of the egg so dad leaves them alone to have at it. And fend for themselves. And yes, it's dad who sits on the egg or eggs; mom splits as soon as she's laid the egg. You might too if you'd just laid an egg which weighed 20% of your body weight. And if you laid two, you definitely would take off.

The Hatchery flips the script on the survival rate, turning the 5% survival rate into a 98% one. Pretty awesome, right? How do they do that, you ask? Well, quite simply they steal the eggs from dad as soon as mom does the deed and takes off. They can tell when dad is incubating based on his movements from the geotracking tags they've got on him so they swoop in before he can get too emotionally attached to the egg to give the kid a way better chance at life. And yes, the doing it before he gets too attached is for real. Dad will give up on a missing egg after about six days and go look for a lady kiwi to breed with again.

Bennett the kiwi, everyone!! No longer in his box.

Once the Hatchery poaches the egg from the nest (yes, pun intended) they make sure it hatches then they take care of it until the chick is ready to enter the wild and defend itself, although they do release them into predator free environments. Getting to the release process takes about four to six weeks after hatching. Generally speaking they wait until the kiwi reaches its birth weight before letting him or her go. Kiwis are born with part of the egg yolk still in their body; they absorb it for food while they are getting their feet under them which causes their weight to drop. Once they are confident finding insects to eat, their weight starts to go back up again.

The Kiwi Hatchery releases about 120 chicks back to the wild per year. If they were left to nature, about six of those 120 would survive. Using the Hatchery's numbers, that number goes up to about 117. A pretty significant difference, right?

I feel pretty good about visiting the Rainbow Springs Nature Park even if it is a sort of zoo. The work they are doing to increase the kiwi population in Aotearoa is important and the education we got in the Hatchery portion of the Park was important to us. We learned a lot. The kiwi is a strange bird, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It's almost a sort of missing link kind of species: they are the only birds that have marrow in their bones and umbilical cords, traits otherwise reserved on this planet for mammals. Strange stuff.

Scene from a night walk. What's that round thing? Could it be? Is it? It's got to be, doesn't it?

Speaking of strange stuff, let's get back to that night adventure we were on shall we?

So kiwi walks at night are a sort of a thing on Stewart Island. I know I didn't mention it but the kiwi is nocturnal, in case that wasn't reasonably inferable. Tuesday night, the one with the whole quarantine fence, was a bust. We struck out on our kiwi walk entirely. We spent about 90 minutes roaming around a beach being assaulted by thousands of sand hoppers (insects) and then tramping around some random fields in the pitch black with green and red flashlights and saw nothing. Well, that's not exactly true. We did see a few rats. Ironically. Although they were on the right side of the quarantine fence. I guess that's good. At least the fence works.

It's also not exactly true that we saw no kiwis that night either. We saw one on the drive home but I (and not our guide) spotted it. It was visible for maybe 20 seconds in the car headlights before our tour operator turned them off and broke out the flashlights. Poof! It was gone before that switchover happened.

But up at the airfield the night before? Yeah, we saw some. And it was pretty amazing.

There is an excitement about seeing a wild creature in its natural environment that seems to never get old for me. Whether it's coming across a bear or a bison somewhere in North America or a lion or elephant in Africa or a blue footed booby or shark in the Galapagos, there's a spark there each time it happens. I think it's knowing that this is not a concocted experience, that it's not guaranteed and there are no certain outcomes. Now I'm not going to sit here and write that the first time I saw a kiwi in the wild was as exciting or memorable as a whole herd of elephants but there was something special about this encounter because it was at night. Nope I wasn't going to get gored or eaten by a kiwi bird, but I was wholly not equipped to see them in the pitch black, flashlight or no flashlight.

Night photos by flashlight with an iPhone. This is about as good as it gets with the picture quality.

From the time we exited the van we were riding in (after passing through the "no access" airport gate; we apparently had permission...) it look us about 20 minutes to find our first kiwi and it literally looked like a fluffy ball. See the second photo above. While it's easy to believe that we could have walked right by this thing if it had stood still, that's really not true. First, there's no way our guide would have let us but second, it just didn't look like part of the landscape. It was clear it was not a plant.

Apparently we had spotted a three month old kiwi bird. Cool. Later on, we'd stumble across a larger bird, likely aged about 18 months. The second one was clearly bigger than the first but neither was full grown. It takes about three years for that to happen.

So what does a kiwi do when it's out in it's natural environment, you might ask? Well from the maybe an hour tops of checking these creatures out by flashlight I have two things. First, they poke around in the ground with their extremely long beaks. They are looking for insects and worms in the ground and really nothing more. They didn't seem skittish or concerned much about eight humans watching them because they don't really have any natural predators. So they did a lot of poking around while we watched dumbfounded about having found a bird looking for worms. 

I'm not downplaying this experience by saying this. It was awesome. But that's what they were doing.

Last red photo, I promise. Pretty much the same as the last one but further away so less grainy. Maybe.

Now if you get just a little bit too close, they will flee but they obviously don't fly away like most other birds that you get too close to. They don't even flap their wings, which have evolved to be so small as to be completely vestigial and actually non-visible. Instead, they run. This is the second thing. And let me tell you these animals are comedic runners. How nobody has ever made a successful cartoon about the kiwi bird running is beyond me. The roadrunner has nothing on these birds.

I don't know how to put this delicately so I won't. It's a like a butt with bird feet (no legs; just feet) and a spherical head with a beak at least 1.5 times as long as the head is round. Don't get me wrong, they can move. Fast. But the way they do it is hilarious. It's like a bobbing scamper. I've never seen any other creature move quite this way.

So does a trip about to the other side of the world and then traveling right to the north end to the south end (like right to the south) of a country to spend like an hour watching a bird eat and run sound like a worthwhile effort to you? If it doesn't I don't particularly care. It was worth it to us. There is literally nowhere else on Earth that you can check out a kiwi in the wild other than in New Zealand. And there's a better chance of doing it on Stewart Island than anywhere else in the country. It's also not like this is the only thing we did on our trip; it was just a component of the journey. Live dreams, even if they are small ones.

All told, we saw five kiwi in New Zealand: one in the National Kiwi Hatchery; one in the nocturnal part of Rainbow Springs Nature Park right next to the Hatchery; and three on Stewart Island. We placed a lot of faith in Stewart Island to pay off as the centerpiece of our New Zealand trip. It delivered, for the kiwis and everything else we hoped it would be.

Inevitably in a lot of these guided tours we take there is a "let's find out where everyone is from" moment at the beginning. What ensues is a country naming exercise by everyone in the group. We had one of these on our National Kiwi Hatchery visit and when our guide found out we were from Washington, D.C. she told us there is a kiwi in Washington. Who knew? It's apparently at the National Zoo. We won't be visiting. We no longer go to zoos and it won't be like Stewart Island anyway. And that's the whole point of actually being there.

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How We Did It
Rainbow Springs Nature Park is located in Rotorua about two miles north of downtown. Drive or take a taxi (for about $20 NZ) or take the number 1 bus (super easy!) and get off at Skyline near the Volcanic Hills Winery. There's a bus stop about across the street from Rainbow Springs. I would recommend the Kiwi Behind the Scenes tour when you get to the Park. The menu of pricing is confusing but we said we only wanted the Kiwi tour and somehow we got ours for $20 NZ each. I'm not sure we were supposed to get admission to the Park for this price but we were told we could walk around anyway.

Getting to Stewart Island is not the easiest trip in the world but we found it so worth it. Fly or drive or bus down to Invercargill airport (where you can get on the pilot-plus-eight-passengers three times daily Stewart Island Flights) or to Bluff (where you can take the Stewart Island Ferry) to make your way down there. We took the plane there and the ferry back (keeping it fresh...) and both worked well although the flight is faster and way more fun, although I'm not sure I'd want to be on that plane in windy weather. I would highly recommend a trip to Stewart Island.

All told, we spent three nights on the Island. We went kiwi spotting on two of those three nights: once with Ange from Beaks and Feathers and once with somebody else. Ange was recommended by our hotel and we got good words from everyone we met on the island when we mentioned we were going kiwi spotting with her. We (or should I say she) found kiwis pretty quickly and she clearly knows these animals both in general and the specific individuals we found that night. I'd highly recommend calling or emailing her as soon as you decide that seeking out kiwis on Stewart Island is for you. Click on Beaks and Feathers earlier in this paragraph for the website.

I will not mention the "somebody else" we went with on the second night we were on the Island. We spent about two hours for 20 seconds of kiwi time and as I mentioned that was based on spotting one on the drive home. We were disappointed but then again we may have just picked the wrong night. The tricky thing about nature tours is sometimes nature doesn't cooperate.

If you decide to spent a night or more on Stewart Island, I'd recommend looking and booking early. We started looking for hotels a little more than five months ahead of our visit and found extremely limited availability. And by that I mean some backpacking places, a couple of Air B&Bs and one hotel. We ended up price comparing between the hotel and the Air B&Bs and decided that there wasn't much difference in cost between the two. We ended staying at Church Hill Lodge which was expensive but way worth it for us. I'd recommend looking for a hotel as soon as you know you will be traveling to Stewart Island.

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