New Zealand 05-17Dec07

From JS

I assume all of you know about New Zealand's beautiful scenery. FYI, New Zealand is Earth's land of birds, not just the capital of seabirds. No other country on the planet has only one mammal, a marsupial bat, and the rest of its wildlifes are birds. New Zealand's ecosystem revolves around birds. Sadly, in this world of advanced communications, pure ecosystem cannot survive, so New Zealand has lost many of its native birds to introduced species. I thought Singapore's mynas and crows were a disaster but having been to New Zealand, I am glad the British didn't bring along additional canaries and finches and other mammals.

Back to the bird...

With a couple of hours left before sunset, 9pm in NZ time, I took my brother to a braided river near my hotel at Lake Tekapo and saw this fellow. I may not be a taxonomist but I can see an obvious difference between Oceania's Pied Stilt and the northern Black-Winged Stilt. With much anticipation, this bird could soon be a seperate species and not a subspecies. Correct me if I am a little outdated on the new taxonomic name of this bird.

Here's an endemic NZ bird. I admit that this is not a very sharp photo of the bird or a good example of its beauty. However, I would like to use this photo to raise your attention to LOTR. This smallish bird was photographed at Isengard in LOTR film. Isengard is a scene in the 2^nd movie, where the trees destroy the orcs camp, so while watching the movie, if you see any small thing moving about in the shadow amongst the grass, that's the Banded Dotterel.

As my trip coincide with its breeding season, I got a chance to see its roundish chick and the bright chestnut band across its breast. Looks like birds also like to raise their offsprings in beautiful places -- a large braided river surrounded by lush green beeches-covered hills against a backdrop of ice capped mountains.

My family was very lucky to see three of this endemic Fiordland Crested Penguin at Milford Sound, knowing that December is after the breeding season and noon isn't the right time to see penguins returning to sea or to the nest if they even do so in December! After seeing three of this small fellow hobbling down the rocky shore into the water, well, I am glad I came to New Zealand in December. In life, we can't have everything in our way, I saw the penguins and missed the nesting brown skuas.

In this sequence of 3 photos, you will be looking at two penguins waiting for the next incoming tide and at the same time looking out for danger.

The penguin at the right had plunged into the water while the fellow on the left watch on. At that instant, I recall the scene in the Guinness advertisement of the two emperor penguins where one pushes the other into the water to be the guinea pig.

Though the penguins are rather small, sometimes, the openings can be smaller, so the penguin on the right is trapped. The open sea is so close yet so far, just one more small opening to pass.

At last, both of them made it to the sea and no more photos of them.

Another endemic bird of NZ. Sorry, it should be another endemic subsp of NZ. The photo shows a white-flippered Little Blue Penguin, note the white edges of the flippers. This bird is from the same species of penguin as one would see at Philips Island of Australia. I can't really describe how small this bird is really is but I can say that I couldn't see it until the bird swam right up to me.

In my introduction, I mentioned about NZ being the seabird capital. Well, that's true though I haven't seen it firsthand but got a little clue about it. On my wildlife cruise in Akaroa, along the coast, where on my right is Pacific Ocean, back is Southern Ocean and left is land, I saw dozens of shearwaters and petrels. Some flying high up in the sky, some flying in the wave, following the wavefront. As this trip is focused on leisure rather than birds, I let my mother used my binoculars. With only my camera as my binoculars, I could id just a few of them.

There was a Cape Pigeon fleeing from the incoming 2m high wave, several Hutton's Shearwaters doing what they do best, following the wavefront and a White-faced Storm Petrel surfing the wave. In addition, there were dozens of other seabirds in the background, possibly fluttering shearwaters and the black-colour petrels. Sadly, the ship captain was more interested with the endemic NZ Fur Seals. Nevertheless, I got a glimpse of the seabirds capital.

On the left, is an Australasian Gannet. I think it looks like a booby with yellow head and white plumages.

Here's a Sooty Shearwater. My mother spotted the bird first and alerted me to a "shag" floating on the water. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a Sooty Shearwater swimming in the water. As the boat is rushing back to the harbour, it won't care about a bird in its path. So caught by surprise, the shearwater clumsily threaded on the water and took off, leaving me firing away at its flight. Nevertheless, my photos are good enough for identification.

Song Thrush. This is an introduced bird, usually found in park (only seen once during the trip).

NZ is famed for pelagic seabirds, not gulls or terns. Nevertheless, given its isolated location, the gulls and terns that can be found in NZ are very localised. You can see them everyday, rain or shine.

Here's the largest gull of NZ, Southern Black-Backed Gull or Kelp Gull. It breeds in NZ which explains its existence.

See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelp_Gull

The red dot on the bill is the food release button. Amazing!

Here's another endemic bird of NZ, the Black-billed Gull.

Out of the 3 terns that can be found in NZ, I saw two sp and out of the two sp, I only photographed one, the White-fronted Tern. The other tern I saw is the endemic Black-fronted Tern, which is a riverine tern.

However, the White-fronted Tern is a coastal tern. In NZ, roads and bridges are build along the coast, so it is possible to drive along a bridge across a river mouth and on one side, you can see the Black-fronted Terns upstream and on the other side, facing the coast, the terns has a white front instead. Fascinating?

Here's another endemic bird of NZ, the Paradise Shelduck. I have an explanation for this bird's name. In the South Island, there is a place called paradise (this is not a joke) and a lot of shelducks could be found there (don't ask me why they do so), so the shelducks are called Paradise Shelducks. This is my version of how the name, Paradise Shelduck, is derived from.

Here's another endemic bird of NZ, New Zealand Scaup (I am getting really tired of seeing this line but no choice, NZ has very high endemism).

We did see the kiwi inside an enclosed sanctuary, no flash so no good pic. The evening environment not suitablle for birding - too windy and chilly. I don't have a sharp photo but you should be able to see a bird in the photo. That bird is a kiwi. If not because it is unique and endangered, honestly, its ugliness is second to the adjutants.

Chaff Finches - most common birds around. Left: male, Right: female.

Reference: www.nzbirds.com