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| Stewart Island Mud |
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| Stewart Island Robin |
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| Kākā comes to visit |
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| As close as we got |
Injuries forced us to skip over Stewart Island on our last trip south, but the call of the wild kiwi bird is impossible to ignore. Reachable only by air or a choppy ferry across the Foveaux Strait, New Zealand's third island (south of the South Island) is home to only 400 humans - and up to 20,000 Stewart Island Brown Kiwi.
We have heard (and been woken up by) kiwi calls in Kahurangi, Mt. Aspiring, Fiordland, and Arthur's Pass, but opportunities to spot the bird in the wild are few. Kiwi are shy and nocturnal, and mainland New Zealand populations are quickly shrinking due to predation. And so if we wanted to give ourselves the best chance to see the 70 million-year-old flightless icon, we knew we'd best get ourselves to Stewart Island.
The two long tramping tracks on Stewart Island are the Rakiura Track and the Northwest Circuit. The Northwest Circuit is 10-12 days long, and much of it plods through Stewart Island's infamous mud (it is has been known to reach up to your chest). The Rakiura Track is an abbreviated version of the Northwest Circuit, and while the three-day Great Walk skips over the most majestic sites on the island, planks and boardwalks offer protection from much of the mud, and of course, it is not 11 days long.
Our Rakiura adventure got off to an inauspicious start when the sunshine and calm turned suddenly to a downpour of pebble-sized hail. Minutes later, the sun was out shining again, which set the tempo for the next three days. Storms blew in over our heads and back out to sea again before we ever had time to take out our rain gear, and we began to understand that 270 or so days of rain a year on the island did not mean plenty of sunshine couldn't be mixed in.
We began the track at Halfmoon Bay, which houses the island township of Oban, and followed the coast to sunny Horseshoe Bay before entering into the bush. Stewart Island is dominated by native vegetation and does not feature beech as do the rainforests of the South Island. The totara, rimu, miro, and rata we walked through gave us an idea of what much of New Zealand might have once looked like, and the forest did feel like it was from another order of creation. Christina called it Dr. Seussian.
Unfortunately, what DOC said was our best opportunity to spot a kiwi on the track, our first night at Port William Hut, was washed out by a storm that never quite cleared. We would later hear a kiwi while searching at twilight back in Oban, but on the track the closest we got to seeing the bird was the comments by former trampers in the hut logs: "Saw kiwi at Port William. Came over and pecked my boot!" "Kiwis spotted: four. Kiwi fights witnessed: two." "WHAT CUTIES <3 <3" etc., etc.
Not all of the Stewart Island experience was lost with the hiding kiwi, however. Because the winter repairs to the track's boardwalk system were still underway, we answered such pressing questions as: Is this mud pool I am about to step in an inch deep or two feet deep? With little longterm damage, Christina also briefly transformed into something called the "Mud-Witch." And we did spot and hear many other native birds, including the kākā, a wild parrot related to the notorious alpine kea, green and red-crowned parakeets, bellbirds, tomtit, grey warblers, brown creepers, moreporks, and others. The heavy winds and rains lessened the song and overall presence of the birds, though we were satisfied by a later trip to the wild bird sanctuary at the neighboring Ulva Island.
Our search for the globular phantom continues, though, I can't imagine we'll come as close again as we have been. This is the enchantment and disappointment of Stewart Island.
The two long tramping tracks on Stewart Island are the Rakiura Track and the Northwest Circuit. The Northwest Circuit is 10-12 days long, and much of it plods through Stewart Island's infamous mud (it is has been known to reach up to your chest). The Rakiura Track is an abbreviated version of the Northwest Circuit, and while the three-day Great Walk skips over the most majestic sites on the island, planks and boardwalks offer protection from much of the mud, and of course, it is not 11 days long.
Our Rakiura adventure got off to an inauspicious start when the sunshine and calm turned suddenly to a downpour of pebble-sized hail. Minutes later, the sun was out shining again, which set the tempo for the next three days. Storms blew in over our heads and back out to sea again before we ever had time to take out our rain gear, and we began to understand that 270 or so days of rain a year on the island did not mean plenty of sunshine couldn't be mixed in.
We began the track at Halfmoon Bay, which houses the island township of Oban, and followed the coast to sunny Horseshoe Bay before entering into the bush. Stewart Island is dominated by native vegetation and does not feature beech as do the rainforests of the South Island. The totara, rimu, miro, and rata we walked through gave us an idea of what much of New Zealand might have once looked like, and the forest did feel like it was from another order of creation. Christina called it Dr. Seussian.
Unfortunately, what DOC said was our best opportunity to spot a kiwi on the track, our first night at Port William Hut, was washed out by a storm that never quite cleared. We would later hear a kiwi while searching at twilight back in Oban, but on the track the closest we got to seeing the bird was the comments by former trampers in the hut logs: "Saw kiwi at Port William. Came over and pecked my boot!" "Kiwis spotted: four. Kiwi fights witnessed: two." "WHAT CUTIES <3 <3" etc., etc.
Not all of the Stewart Island experience was lost with the hiding kiwi, however. Because the winter repairs to the track's boardwalk system were still underway, we answered such pressing questions as: Is this mud pool I am about to step in an inch deep or two feet deep? With little longterm damage, Christina also briefly transformed into something called the "Mud-Witch." And we did spot and hear many other native birds, including the kākā, a wild parrot related to the notorious alpine kea, green and red-crowned parakeets, bellbirds, tomtit, grey warblers, brown creepers, moreporks, and others. The heavy winds and rains lessened the song and overall presence of the birds, though we were satisfied by a later trip to the wild bird sanctuary at the neighboring Ulva Island.
Our search for the globular phantom continues, though, I can't imagine we'll come as close again as we have been. This is the enchantment and disappointment of Stewart Island.
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