16 Sept: TiriTiri Matangi Island

Quick van report: the van—which, BTW, we ought to name; any suggestions? It has pictures of a lizard all over the outside. Actually probably not a lizard but a Tuatara, which is a whole genus and family of its own—anyway the van has some good things going for it. One, the bed is comfortable; we put in 10 hours of good sleep. Inside lights are good, and all the seating is comfortable, both the front travelling seats and the rear reading & computing benches.

This is going to be a long post featuring many unusual animals, so sit back and we'll start with...

Pheobe the Rock Hound

In the purple binder for today, a day-cruise to Tiritiri Matangi, an island nature preserve just off shore. The ferry dock was just a couple of Ks from the park entrance. While we were waiting for the ferry to come, we talked to a local chap who was walking his dog through the marina. His dog was carrying a large stone in her mouth.

Phoebe, her name was, and every day he walks her along the shore and every day she carefully selects a nice big smooth hunk of sandstone—no sharp lava rock for Phoebe—and brings it up to the car-park.

Dolphins

The ferry arrived, up from Auckland.

We got on for the 15-minute run to the island. A volunteer docent (one of many, we were to learn) distributed brochures. Sorry we caught her with a bad expression, she was really very nice.

When we arrived at the island (that is Auckland in the far distance, click to enlarge)...

...something occurred that the docents, who come out every day, said happens only a few times a year: five bottle-nose dolphins came out to greet the ship.

One had a hunk of seaweed caught on his fin. We were told he was playing with it as a toy.

Indeed when it fell off, he went back for it.

New Birds

Now the 15 or so visitors who weren't part of a tour group were divided up among five volunteer docents, so each docent had 2, 3 or 4 people to guide. We picked Robin, who looked a bit like Pete Seeger but was from England, 35 years in New Zealand.

Robin led us on a nearly three-hour walk through the island, stopping what seemed like every few steps to point out a plant or to spot a bird.

Tiritiri Matangi was cleared by settlers in the 1880s and grazed intensively until the 1970s. Then it was set aside as a nature preserve and a long program of reforestation began. Hundreds of volunteers spent thousands of hours planting half a million trees and shrubs. Robin remembered when the woods were only shoulder-height; 30 years on they are pretty respectable forests. Later we met a volunteer who remembered helping to plant trees on the open grasslands.

At the top of the island they left one open pasture for certain birds. The trees to the right here are only 30 years old. In the distance on the left, the Shakespear peninsula where we camped.

Then they trapped and poisoned all the rats, mice, cats, possums, ferrets and other alien predators, and began repopulating the island with natives like the tuatara and many bird species. They built a visitor center at the old lighthouse, which is now solar-powered.

What is most impressive to the casual visitor is the network of trails, boardwalks, and stairs, kilometers of them lacing the island, all volunteer-built and maintained. Here is stairway up one of the gullies that was never logged, so has original old-growth:

With Robin's help we saw and identified the following birds that were new to us:

• New Zealand Kingfisher
• Little Shag
• Bellbird
• Whitehead
• Variable Oystercatcher (he's "variable" because he has different amounts of white at different times)
• Saddleback
• Stitchbird
• Brown Quail
• Takahe

Most of these were too far away or moving too fast for pictures. But we got a close look at a stitchbird at a feeding station.

And we could snap these brown quail (who, although they are Australian imports, are allowed to stay on the island, maybe because they don't compete with any natives, or maybe because they are just so gosh-darn cute) because they were on the trail and wouldn't get off it to let us pass.

The Takahe

And then there's the Takahe (tah-kah-hey). This ground-dwelling, grass-eating moose of a bird is a relative of the pukeko, but three times the weight. They breed slowly, don't fly, and nest on the ground, so they were sitting ducks (so to speak) for the cats, rats and possums. But in this sanctuary they do fine.

Indeed, they are quite tame.

In fact, they spend daylight hours trying to steal visitors' sandwiches.

Showers! Power! Internet!

After the ferry returned, we drove 20K to Orewa to stay at a commercial campground. Here we could have certain things Shakespear didn't offer: hot showers, and electrical power to recharge our camera and computer batteries. In town we found an internet cafe and caught up our online lives, David posting two blog entries here, and Marian updating the FBC website with a story about Jane Appel, Glamour girl.

Plus we had a really excellent seafood dinner. What a nice day that was.