We have now seen 2.5% of the world's takahe

In late February we visited Tiritiri Matangi Island ("a place tossed by the winds") with Chris and Sharon and Will and Diana. Tiritiri is a 220 ha predator-free island located a little way off the coast east of Auckland that is a home for many of NZ's rare and/or endangered birds. It is a place I wanted to visit since we first arrived in New Zealand.


Tiritiri Matangi Island shoreline, near Auckland, NZ

Tiritiri has an interesting ecological history. Prior to the 1400's, it was covered with a dense, NZ coastal forest. It was then settled and partially cleared by different Maori tribes. After the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) between the Maori and British Crown, the island was leased to sheep and cattle farmers and a lighthouse was built on it in 1865. Over the years, land clearing, grazing and trampling by sheep and cattle, and the munching of any new growth by kiore rats, denuded the island of almost all its original forest. In 1971 the farming lease for the island ended (was withdrawn), and Tiritiri became a Recreation Reserve in the Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park.

I am not sure what the original plan for the recreation reserve was, but in the mid-1970's, several biologists determined that Tiritiri was not going to naturally regenerate, or that it would take a very long time to do so. So, after a program of pest eradication, between 1984 and 1994 volunteers planted approx. 280,000 native trees and other plants on Tiritiri. (I thought I read somewhere else it was 360,000, but whatever the number, it was a lot of trees). Some native birds had managed to survive on the island, but since its restoration, 12 bird species have been re-established there, such as little spotted kiwi, takahe, and stitchbird. There are also tuatara on the island. (For more info on Tiritiri Island, see: http://www.tiritirimatangi.org.nz/history.)

Tui at feeding station, Tiritiri Matangi Island

The restoration of the island's forest has been very successful. Although it will still be quite some time before it matures, Will and Diana said it has really changed since they last visited it 14 years ago. The regrowth of the forest has in turn helped to restore some bird populations. For example, at one point there were only around 170 adult stitchbirds left, with all of them living on Little Barrier Island, which is fairly close to Tiritiri. There are now more than 200 stitchbirds on Tiritiri alone and some are relocated from Tiritiri to other reserves, such as Maungatautari Ecological Island (located south of Hamilton--I talked about it in a previous posting). Not all is perfect. Because the forest has not matured yet, there are feeding stations set up around the island, particularly for the nectar-feeding birds, such as tui, bellbirds, and stitchbirds. Without these stations some of the birds would starve.

Another interesting thing about Tiritiri is that right from the beginning of its restoration, it was designed to be open to and accessible by the public. There is a daily shuttle to the island and private boats can land there as well. Tours of the island are available. There are a series of nice paths around the island, and because of the feeding stations, even non-hardcore birders like us are able to see a lot of birds. While we saw a lot of birds, what I really liked about the island was the chance to hear a lot of native birdsong. Places like Tiritiri seem so vibrant when you compare them to other NZ forests. I would definitely go back to Tiritiri if we found ourselves in New Zealand again.

While we were at Tiritiri we saw three takahe. As I wrote before, there are only around 200 left. So, between these three and the two we saw at Maungatautari, we have seen 2.5% of the world's takahe. I told the group that given how rare they are, I found it strange that we have seen so many of them. Because there are so few, you could get to know them as individuals--I named these three Jack and Diane and Junior. (Jack and Diane is a reference to the John Mellancamp song, not Karen's mom, who looks nothing like a takahe.) Again like Maungatautari, I cannot say we saw these takahe in the wild. They were tearing up the grass around the picnic area near the old lighthouse.


Marshall and Diana beachcombing at Tiritiri 

As always, we had a fun day with Chris and Sharon and Will and Diana. We drove up to Auckland in the morning, where Chris and Sharon launched their boat at the marina in Half-Moon Bay. From there we motored out to Tiritiri, which took about 45 minutes. Along the way we came across a pod of commpn dolphins who started riding the bow wave--always cool to watch. After touring the island for a few hours we had a great picnic lunch on the beach. Marshall and Diana did some beachcombing, having a competition to see who could find the most beachglass. We left Tiritiri around 2:00 because the wind and tide were getting up, making the boat ride home pretty lumpy. Marshall and I sat at the front of the boat and had a lot of fun getting tossed about. (It reminded me of fishing with my Uncle Rick on Big Sand Lake near Minaki. I could write a lengthy blog about my fishing adventures with my Uncle--perhaps some other day.) We had it good; those riding in the back had a smoother ride but they got very wet from the spray.

Once we got closer to Auckland we anchored at Waiheke Island for awhile, which is now a kind-of suburb of Auckland. It has every type of home on it, from old baches to million dollar mansions. Will, Marshall and I did a bit of snorkeling, although we did not see much. When we got back to Half Moon Bay, our trip ended with Marshall getting an ice cream treat, which seems to happen regularly when he spends a day with Diana.

Where has the time gone?

Tiritiri Island (near Auckland), February 25th

Good day,

I apologize for being so delinquent in posting any new stories about our time in New Zealand. Many of you probably know the feeling, you fall behind on something and the longer you stay behind the harder it becomes to start (or restart). So, to help me restart our postings, I am going to keep this one pretty simple. In this posting I will tell you a little bit about what we have been doing with our time when we have not been seeing the sites. I will also talk about a few things we have noticed about NZ.

Marshall:

After a bit of a rough start transitioning to a new school and new friends, Marshall has really pulled it together and is making the most of his school time here. He has made some friends and one really good friend in particular, Tyler. In fact as I write, Marshall is spending the weekend at Tyler's bach (cottage) where he will get to spend lots of time playing on the beach, exploring, and having fun without his parents.

At school, we have received nothing but glowing reports from his teacher. She says he is an excellent role model and would love to have him for the whole year. Not to brag, but Marshall even received a certificate from the principal and his teacher for his "amazing manners and for working hard all the time." One thing Karen and I found funny was to hear how organized she thinks Marshall is. They are given class work assignments at the start of the week that are to be completed by Friday. Apparently Marshall is very diligent about getting them done early or on time. Before NZ, this was not his usual modis operendi.

Marshall finishes school here in two weeks. The first term ends on April 5th. Then the students get a two week break and return for term 2 of their school year. Marshall has said the time has gone by really fast but that he is also really looking forward to getting home and seeing his friends and classmates. We return to Canada in time for Marshall to attend the last month of the school year. This is important to Marshall because he and his classmates will be "graduating" from Grade 5 and going to a new school for Grade 6.

One example of how Marshall has stretched himself since we have been here is his trying out for his school swim team. Karen and I were both surprised at how keen he was because to this point in his life, Marshall has not been a trying-out kind of kid. Anyway he made the team (fastest breaststroke). Last week there was a swim meet where Marshall's school competed against around 10 other schools. Unfortunately, the result was not what Marshall was hoping for. Marshall can swim fast, but some of the other schools have very serious, real swim teams (labelled swim caps, racing bathing suits (seeing them on 8-10 year olds made me shake my head)). They started the race from actual diving blocks. Like me, Marshall is not a born diver and his school never practiced any diving to start his race. So, of the 5 swimmers in his heat, Marshall was the slowest starter (by a lot). However, Karen and I (no parental bias here) both think he was the fastest swimmer as he came third and was catching up to the two boys in front of him. So, Marshall did not make it to the final 5, which he was unhappy about. What he liked least about the day was only getting to swim once. All that build-up and nervousness for one short lap. Still, he can't have been too discouraged as he said he would think about trying speed swimming classes in the fall, vs. an outright No! to the idea.

I think you can tell from what I have written that Karen and I are proud of and pleased for Marshall about how he has embraced his time here.

Karen:


Karen hard at work

Karen is now three months into her sabbatical and has no idea where the time has gone. She has been very diligent and other than our week-long trip has worked full-time (other people on sabbaticals here say she is working too much and/or making them look bad). A lot of her time has been spent co-writing and co-editing a report for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The report is a state of the science review about estrogen compounds and their impacts on human health and the environment in general. From where I sit, it has been a very demanding project. The one down-side of the report is that Karen has not been able to spend as much time working on some papers she wanted to complete for publication, which was one of the main purposes of her sabbatical. That is likely to change though as the UNEP report is due Monday. Karen has also given two well-attended seminars in the past month.

Of the three of us, Karen has been the most social. The institute where she is working has regular tea-times every day and on most days Karen goes in the morning and catches up with people. (She always has news for me at the end of the day.) She finds tea time quite civilized. Her office mates in Winnipeg did the same thing, but this is not a regular occurrence at UNB. She has also got out a bit more in the evenings than I have (or wanted to), such as going to a few wine tastings.

Finally, she has been keeping fit by going to the gym and doing some jogging.

Scott:

Not writing our family blog.

Okay, I've been doing a bit more than that. Over the past month I have been volunteering with two organizations. The first project has been assisting one day a week with the restoration of a creek gully within the City of Hamilton. Sounds glamorous, but my work has been pulling weeds. Still, I am happy to be helping with this project as the gully has a neat history. It was owned for a long time by a local doctor. When he got the gully 60+ years ago, it was a donkey paddock and pretty much devoid of natural vegetation. Since that time he has been replanting the gully with native trees, shrubs, ferns, etc. and has rewilded much of it. A few years ago, he gave the gully to the city. They were happy to have it, but had/have no real budget to do much work on it, hence the need for volunteers. It is really neat to walk through this natural area in the heart of the city and hear true NZ forest birds. Given time and dedication, one man can accomplish a lot.

Another project I worked on involved building a stretch of boardwalk around a lake that is about 40 minutes south of Hamilton. To make a long story short, I enjoyed working on this project and given the building skills of a majority of the volunteers, they were happy to have me.

Outside of my volunteer work I have been keeping up to date with a few projects back in New Brunswick, doing some reading, managing the household, planning a few of our weekends, and running.


A few things about New Zealand

1. No shoes, still service: One thing I don't think I will get used to seeing is the number of people in bare feet. Kids wear bare feet at school and lots of people walk on the sidewalks and streets with no shoes. While this was surprising, what I find most strange is seeing people in bare feet in grocery stores and restaurants. It just does not fit with my Canadian sensibilities. If people are wearing something on their feet, 9 times out of 10 it is jandals (flip-flops).

2. Friendly people, unless you're a pedestrian: Marshall and I walk a lot here and we are constantly dodging cars. Simply put, at uncontrolled intersections pedestrians do not have the right of way. In Hamilton, there are very few stop signs or traffic lights and almost all side streets merge with either a modified yield or round-abouts. Because of this, drivers do not stop at intersections and are usually looking to their right for oncoming traffic. They will not stop for pedestrians who are on the sidewalk at the intersection. Again, very un-Canadian. The classic for Marshall and I so far was once we were halfway across an intersection of a side-street where it merged with a main thoroughfare. A driver coming down the main road took the time to give us two friendly beeps, wheeled through the intersection literally running over our toes, and waved at us as she went by. I find I have to be especially careful when I am out running because I still find myself looking left first at intersections vs. right. I don't have this problem driving anymore (too much), but when running I am constantly slowing down and triple checking at every intersection.

3. The weather: Unfortunately for us, the north island has experienced its cloudiest summer in 70 years. As a result, it has not been as summer-like as we expected. We are not complaining because we have missed a Canadian winter, although several days this week it was warmer in many places in Canada than it was in Hamilton. We have been pretty lucky though with our weekends. Although cloudy, we have not had much rain on the weekends. During the week has been a different story.

4. Kiwi fruit: We have been eating a fair amount of kiwi fruit since our arrival. Please take note that it is kiwi fruit, not simply kiwi as we would call it in Canada. Kiwis the people (New Zealanders) don't mind having the same name as an odd-looking flightless bird, but they take strong exception to having the same name as a fruit, hence the emphasis on kiwi "fruit" vs. simply kiwi.

Like all food in NZ, we are surprised at how expensive kiwi fruit is here. I think there are two reasons for this. First, kiwi fruit orchards are being attacked by a disease that is resulting in fewer kiwi fruits. Second, the price for kiwi fruit, at least in stores, seems to be tied to the export price of kiwi fruit. This seems to be the same for all foods here as both lamb and dairy products are surprisingly expensive. People we have met from Britain say they can buy NZ lamb much cheaper in Britain than they can here. On the plus side, good NZ wines are very reasonable.

Regular gas has averaged around $2.10/liter during our time here.

5. Sheep: Yes, New Zealand has a lot of sheep--around 48 million of them. About 12 sheep for every 1 New Zealander. The number of sheep has been declining, while the number of cows has been increasing (now around 6 million). As an aside, there are an estimated 70 million nasty possums living in NZ.

NZ is very green and pastoral. The only problem is that like the Canadian prairies, pretty much anywhere that can be farmed/have a pasture, has been. So, like in Canada, you find parks on "useless" land, e.g., mountains, swamps, etc.

To the left is a picture of Shrek the Sheep, a Marshall favourite. He was a merino sheep that avoided being sheared for 6 years and became famous in NZ, with books, pictures, and even meeting the NZ Prime Minister. He died in 2011 at the ripe old age of 17. (Photo from: http://nemp.otago.ac.nz/read_speak/2004/read_comprehension/shrek.htm).

One last thing about sheep, they are not as docile as they appear to be.

6. The Great Kiwi Migration: A lot of young people from NZ go on this trek where they move to England for two years, then to Australia, then back to NZ. Under the age of the 30, they are allowed to live and work in England for two years visa free. (One person I talked to about this migration said that many NZers still view England as the motherland.) From there they go to Australia, where there are more and better paying jobs. After awhile, they tire of that and return home to NZ, often to raise a family.

7. Rugby: New Zealand as a country is as obsessed about rugby as Canada is about hockey. A few weekends ago Karen and I went to see the Waikato Chiefs play, who are part of NZ's professional rugby league. We had seats in the end zone right at field level. We had a fun evening, in part because the Chiefs won and scored most of their points at our end of the field, so we got to see lots of action. Before we went we boned up on some of the basic rules. However, throughout the game we were pretty lost about what made something a penalty or other infraction--the subtle nuances of the game that take a while to learn. Fans being the same everywhere though, we heard loud and clear when the referee made a good or bad call for or against the Chiefs. One final note about the game, it was played by some very big men.

8. JAFAs: JAFA stands for "just another f#$&!ing Aucklander". This is a common expression on the north island, particularly along the east coast where there are lots of nice beaches, which apparently get over run with tourists from Auckland. (Even people from Auckland call themselves JAFAs.) NZers believe in being modest and that people shouldn't think too highly of themselves. Auckland is prosperous compared to much of the country and is the most populous city by far, so it is not looked on so favourably by the rest of the country. Reminds me of Canada and Toronto.

Enjoying the surf at Papamoa Beach, near Tauranga NZ

 9. The beaches: After the friends we have made here, the thing we will likely miss most about NZ is the easy access to an endless number of spectacular beaches. The past few weekends we have spent a lot of time at different beaches, all of them offering kilometres long stretches of clean sand and great, if cool, swimming.

Well that's it for now. Now that I have started writing again, you won't have to wait so long to hear about some of our recent weekend adventures. Cheers.

Even close to Hamilton we see something unique

There is not too much exciting to report for the week of Monday, February 13 to Friday, February 17. Karen went on a field trip for three days to the Tukituki River with some of her colleagues from NIWA. Marshall attended his second week of school and I worked on a few small projects, including updating our blog. The week started out a little rough for Marshall at school but by Friday things were going well and he said the week went by really fast,

One thing that surprised Marshall this week was that nothing was done for Valentine's Day at his school. It seemed to be pretty much a non-event throughout New Zealand.

One of our biggest challenges with our trip to NZ is finding things to do in the evening, especially if it is raining. If the weather is good we often go out for a walk. Some nights we practice soccer skills or Marshall and I do an exercise trail on the campus grounds. We also feed the ducks in the university ponds, which can be quite entertaining. We have taught Marshall how to play crib and play a game on average once every three nights. He has won a few games and is getting a really good handle on counting his points. I attended a lecture on gully restoration one evening and Karen went to a wine tasting another night. So, we are finding things to do but I miss being able to work on things at home.

On Saturday morning we went to the Tamahere Market, which is just south of Hamilton. It is a farmers' market that is open every third Saturday of the month. Given all the food we bought, they were happy to see us. After the market we went to Chris and Sharon's for lunch with Will and Diana. Afterwards they took us on a boat tour of the Waikato River through Hamilton. We had great weather and got a different view of the city. For a city with only 140,000 people, it is spread a long way along the river. Later that evening Karen went with Will and Diana to the Hamilton Gardens to take in some small concerts. There was an arts festival at the Gardens for two weeks. We attended a few things but there were a lot of evenings with rain, so we didn't take in all that we wanted.


Sunday, February 19 - Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust and the rare bird - takahe

The Maungatautari Ecological Island, 45 minutes south of Hamilton, is a nature park/preserve of native NZ forest surrounded by a 47 kilometre long pest-proof fence. Outside the Island are pastures and farmland. The forest within the preserve remained because the slopes of Mt. Maungatautari (900 metres) were too steep for farming. However, pest mammals (darn possum) killed off much of the bird life and damaged the forest. Recognition of the ecological and cultural significance of Maungatautari led to the creation of the Trust in 2001. The 47 km fence was completed in 2006. It is one serious fence. There are also two smaller, fenced-in enclosures, North and South, inside the larger fenced in area. These smaller enclosures were completed before the larger one. After 2006, a large amount of poison baits were dispersed throughout the large enclosure, killing most of the pests.

Since the completion of the larger and two smaller enclosures a number of endangered and rare birds have been reintroduced to Maungatautari. These include the takahe (only around 260 left), the hihi (stitch-bird) (once extinct throughout mainland NZ), kaka (a big parrot), and brown kiwi. Kokepo (NZ native trout - endangered) have also been reintroduced to the Island. All of the reintroduced species have successfully raised chicks, so the Trust and its work to date are a success.


"Wild" takahe
(the one on the right has a radio antennae on its back)

We spent around 3 hours walking the trails in the Southern Enclosure. During our walk we had the great fortune to see a mated pair of takahe, which like the kiwi, is another long-lived, big, flightless NZ bird. Actually, our sighting was a little artificial as they provide the takahe with drinking water (bowls) in an open area and I think the takahe hang out around their a fair bit. (From reading a bit more about takahe, I don't think they are a true forest bird. They eat the roots and tender shoots of grasses, so I think they like open areas vs. forests more.) Artificial or not, it felt strange but fun to be able to see this very endangered species so close. We also saw and heard lots of other birds including hihi. Visiting Maungatautari gave us an idea of what NZ's forests might have sounded like before the introduction of possums, rats, and other predators.

kaka in Maungatautari

Marshall really enjoyed our walk in Maungatautari because we got to spend a lot of time watching a flock of eight kaka, which have been called the "clowns of the forest". Like all parrots, they are pretty raucous. One flew so close to us that Marshall and I both ducked and it fluffed Karen's hair. Walking the trails themselves through Maungatautari is also rewarding, but Karen and I still preferred our walks through Whirinaki.

In the end, our "quiet" time in Hamilton was pretty exciting as we were able to spend some fun time with good friends and rare birds.

Next posting - we visit Tiritiri Island. (Yes, more stuff about nature.)