|
British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
|
Home Copyright
© |
Birdwatching
the wrong way round! by Alan Giles It was only after visiting all the places we did in New Zealand that we realised that we ought to have done things in a different order. Doing so would have prepared us to look for the right things later in our trip. As it was, while we saw a lot, we didn't always appreciate what it was that we were seeing. So, where should we have started? Preparation before you go - it's worth a trip to New Zealand House (on the corner of Pall Mall and Haymarket) and the Kiwifruits New Zealand Shop outside its back door at 7 Royal Opera Arcade. My day trip to London from Milton Keynes was definitely a benefit in picking up leaflets from the basement of NZ House (the annual "What To See & Do" guide is one to look out for) and buying the odd map and guide book from the shop. One of our reasons for visiting New Zealand was to see its unique birdlife - and the best place to start looking at birds was definitely Tiritiri Matangi island. Day trips by ferry are available from the red brick Ferry Building right in the heart of Auckland, just a few yards from the shops in Queen Street. The problem with trying to do this trip first, is that you need to book in advance - and as the trip is very popular, you may have to wait a day or two for space on the ferry. So, get down to the Ferry Building as soon as you arrive in Auckland and book your ferry ticket to Tiritiri and a place on the associated guided introductory walk. While you are in Auckland waiting for the day of your trip there is plenty more to do: for the birdwatchers, you ought to buy a suitable NZ field guide such as the excellent "The Hand Guide to the Birds of New Zealand" by Hugh Robertson & Barrie Heather - we bought our copy in Whitcoulls on Queen Street; Auckland Zoo, has a Kiwi house (where you can see Kiwis during the day, as their house lights are kept out of phase - light at night, dark during the day) though we preferred the one in Otorohanga (more of that later); Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World has plenty of penguins for the bird fans (alongside its aquaria for the fish fans) but I'll be telling you about seeing penguins in the wild later in this article. If you haven't hired a car, the "Explorer Bus" is handy for visiting most of Auckland's tourist spots. A day ticket lets you hop on and off as you please - its circular route passes the Ferry Building, the Zoo and Kelly Tarlton's and all of the "Big 12 Attractions" of Auckland. So, you've explored Auckland, collected and absorbed all the tourist brochures you can, and the day of your trip to Tiritiri Matangi arrives: take a packed lunch and something to drink with you as facilities on the island are limited. Your guide will introduce you to the rare native birds, protected on Tiritiri against the introduced predators prevalent on the main islands (dogs, cats, possums etc.). You'll see Takahe, once thought to be extinct - now believed to number just 200 in the world, 20 of whom are on Tiritiri. Plus: Tui, Bellbird, Stitchbird, Kokako, NZ Robin, Pukeko and so on - hopefully in the company of your guide, who will point them out to you and explain how to recognise them. Before you leave the Auckland region do visit the various historic sites - Howick Historical Village (original and reconstructed 19th century buildings), the Auckland Museum (Maori artefacts, NZ historical displays) and the various properties of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (free to National Trust members). Our trail introducing us to NZ birds should then have taken us south of Auckland to Otorohanga. The Otorohanga Kiwihouse and Native Bird Park has much the best Kiwi display we saw - they described the light level as "moonlight" and it was certainly much brighter than the other Kiwi houses we saw. If you stay overnight in the area (there's an adjacent motor home park if you hired one) you can visit the Bird Park after dark to see Kiwi in an even more natural setting. In the Bird Park you will also see Morpork, Kaka, Kea, Weka and the usual Tui, Bellbird, Pukeko etc. Then to complete our North Island bird education we should have taken a "Tongariro Eco Tour" from Turangi on Lake Taupo. A flat bottom boat takes you on a gentle trip on the lake to look at Scaup, Black Swans and possibly other rarer birds such as the Spotless Crake, Banded Rail or Bittern. Before you leave North Island it's worth a trip to Rotorua for the Maori culture and volcanic displays. I recommend "Te Whakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao" (known as "Te Whakarewarewa" for short) as the best combination site - it has the Pohutu geyser and plenty of bubbling mud pools, steaming ground and water, Maori cultural displays, and another Kiwi house! The best museum in New Zealand is reckoned to be "Te Papa" in Wellington - but we didn't make it that far. And you must get outside the towns I've mentioned and see the countryside - the "Bay of Islands", the Coromandel Peninsula, Tongariro National Park all demand a holiday in themselves to do them justice. Our South Island birdwatching was done in roughly the right order - we just made the mistake of visiting the South Island before the orientation trips in the North Island that I've described - so I'll now tell you about the South in the order we actually did things: We took an internal flight to Christchurch, picked up our hire car and checked into the only hotel that we had prebooked. We thought this was a reasonable precaution, as Christchurch is quite a busy city (population 350 000). Christchurch driving conditions are calmer than Auckland (where you have motorways and rapid successions of junctions) but it does have a couple of major streets which are one way (in opposite directions) and a lot of traffic lights. We parked in the hotel car park and did most of our touring of Christchurch on foot or using the "City Loop" tram (another vehicle you can buy a day ticket for and hop on and off as you fancy). The following day we drove south to Oamaru, where we quickly found a guest house. On one side of the headland by Oamaru live Yellow Eyed Penguins, and there's a public hide on the cliffs above the beach where you can watch the birds come ashore just before sunset (or if you're up early in the morning, watch them leave around dawn). The Yellow Eyed Penguins drift home one by one, and we saw about five arrive in the hour we were there one day in March - apparently there are much better times of year, so it's worth doing your research on the best time to visit (which we didn't). My photograph of a Yellow Eyed Penguin - on maximum zoom - shows a tiny dot on a vast sandy beach (so bring binoculars and long telephoto lenses if you want to do better). Don't stay too long on the south side of the headland, because at sunset you need to head round to the north side to visit the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony. The operation here is slightly more commercial - you pay a small fee to sit in a grandstand and see Blue (also known as Fairy) Penguins come ashore under floodlights. These penguins tend to gather in groups on the shoreline and then make a rush for their nests in the cliff face the other side of a narrow track. Despite the floodlighting it was much too dark for any of our photographs to come out - low light video cameras seemed to perform best, flash guns were not allowed as they upset the penguins. We saw about 30 penguins come ashore, again this was low season and in the high season you could be treated to several hundred crossing the floodlight zone. The next day we drove the short distance to Dunedin and the Otago peninsula. The Otago peninsula is a nature lover's dream, plenty of small coves and quiet beaches. It was here that we came across a pair of Sea Lions basking on the beach and occasionally flicking sand across their bodies with their flippers to keep cool. There's another chance to see Yellow Eyed Penguins here, with hides even closer to the birds, but we concentrated on the Royal Albatross colony at Taiaroa Head. This is the only "mainland" Albatross colony in the world. The headland sticks up out of the surrounding ground, and this is apparently enough to make the Albatrosses believe that it is an island safe from predators - and the local humans have been careful to preserve this impression amongst the birds by disturbing them as little as possible. Small groups of tourists are led up the back side of the headland every half hour to the hide on the top of the hill, from where the nesting sites can be seen. It's also common to see Albatrosses circling the headland trying to gain height in order to reach their nests. Our visit was on a calm day, and one poor bird circled the headland for the whole half hour we were there trying to get back to the nest and failing. Again, to get a photograph of a bird at a reasonable size you need a longer lens than the 210mm I had on my camera. There are more opportunities to see penguins further south in South Island, along the coast to Invercargill, but we only had a week in which to do the whole of the South Island - so we switched to looking at the scenery from this point on. We decided therefore to avoid the long trip to the tourist hotspot of Milford Sound and back - instead our next day's travel took us to the other tourist mecca, Queenstown. Set by a large lake nestled amongst the "Remarkable" mountains, Queenstown is exceptionally picturesque - it's also the home of jet-boating and very busy in the tourist season. If we had slightly longer in South Island it might have been better to stay in the small town of Cromwell, which we preferred, for two nights and make a day trip into Queenstown to do the tourist thing. As it was, what we managed to do in our afternoon and evening in Queenstown was to take a 90 minute horse ride up the valley of the Shotover River, soak in the scenery and struggle to find a table in one of the many restaurants in town. Next day it was up bright and early for the drive to Haast. There's another picturesque lake resort, Wanaka, on the way - which you may prefer to Queenstown. There are two roads from Queenstown to Wanaka - the fast one via Cromwell and the short one across the mountains on a gravel track. The latter was one of the four roads in New Zealand that our hire car agreement said we must not use - my brother has been on it and reports that it's quite "hairy", with a narrow gravel track clinging to the side of steep hills above a precipitous drop. Not for the faint hearted. The tarmac road from Wanaka to Haast was spectacular enough for us - twisting and climbing through the gorge of the Haast river to the west coast at an average speed of 30mph. The west coast is a complete contrast to the east. There were only three motels in Haast, and eating places seemed even more limited - but there's always fish and chips in New Zealand, though the fish may have strange sounding Maori names. We walked along the wide Haast beach without another person in sight. Scattered all over the beach were the bare twisted branches of trees - washed down the Haast river when in flood and then deposited back on the beach by the tides. Once on the coast the roads get straighter, flatter and faster and the next day we drove all the way up to Hokitika - still having plenty of time to stop for a couple of walks in the rainforest. The New Zealand Department of Conservation yellow and green walk signs are very helpful here - most walks are extremely well signposted, with typical journey times (rather than distances) shown. We also stopped at Fox Glacier, walking up the last mile or so from the edge of the rainforest to the face of the glacier. Be warned that the temperature drops dramatically in this mile or so, from baking in the warm sun to freezing in the cold wind coming off the glacier and creating its own microclimate. The coast road is very fast, but there are still several single track bridges, where you may well have to give way to traffic coming from the other direction. And, there are two single track bridges shared with the railway - you definitely have to give way if you see a train coming the other way. Hokitika we were told is now much the better place to stop than the larger Greymouth just up the coast. We certainly found a very good B&B in a historic 19th century house, and we found an excellent restaurant on the main street, and could have spent a lot of money on the locally made jade carvings. But, we also got very wet in the hundred yard dash back to the B&B from the restaurant, as the reason for the rainforest's existence became clear. It continued to pour down the following morning as we drove over Arthur's Pass and back to Christchurch - rather dampening our spirits and shortening our walks at the few places we stopped en-route. Next time
we will know that we need to allow much more time to see all of South
Island that we wanted to see. And so it goes for the whole of New Zealand
- a month was not enough. First published in VISA issue 40 (spring 2001). An alternative view of New Zealand |