2 August 2010

We took a two week break in New Zealand in June ostensibly to explore “a camper-van tour of the South Island in Winter” for which we had the use of a Spaceships camper-van! Naturally there was a birding element with four targets in mind: Blue Duck, Great-spotted Kiwi, Okarito Kiwi and Rock Wren.

Our itinerary was Sydney – Christchurch – Arthur’s Pass – Punakaiki – Franz Josef (for Okarito) – Queenstown – Te Anau – Dunedin – Christchurch and we had about 15 days for the trip, 12 of them touring in the Spaceship.

Occasionally the clouds lifted above the snow line and offered some great views of snow...and then there were the pesky Keas. Photos by Alan Mcbride.

One of the major realisations for me as a birder who regularly hires a car is the new found convenience of hiring a camper-van. In this case our Spaceship, called Darth, a Toyota Tarago, was as efficient as any car in getting us around the South Island and probably more so being an AWD version! Fuel economy, comfort and speed were as you would expect in a car. The major realisation though was the ability to simply stop anywhere, swing out the gas cooker, make a cuppa or a cup of soup, toast, lunch, etc., even at one point with views of a distant perched New Zealand Falcon. Spaceships are now in Australia and the UK too.

Rather than cruising into a town for a café this option reduced costs considerably and allowed some splendid tea breaks to be taken. I’d seriously recommend any birders not needing 4WD simply hire a camper-van instead of a rental car. With the proliferation of radar traps, it could save you more money longer term too; unless on a serious twitch when it doesn’t matter.

As it was winter we stayed in motels and resorts more than we would have done in more clement weather and because it was winter, rates were excellent. If it’s not “winter in NZ” you can save additional money by sleeping in it! Still, this is about the Art of the Dip and some of the elements you’ll need if you want to dip successfully!

The art of dipping

Blue Duck. The first thing you need is to gather site information. When it comes to Blue Duck, most Kiwis (people that is) will say something like, “oohh you need to walk a long way for them …” Long walks up mountain-range creeks are seemingly the most popular destinations. Having found one of those sites, e.g. a kilometre or two west of Arthurs Pass, you need to factor in other elements.

For example, it needs to be raining, windy and generally inhospitable.

You also need to walk a fair distance along one of these “creeks” only to find that some of the “ideal sections for Blue Duck” are populated with people trapping ferrets, road works, pipe works, logging, etc! Its gob-smacking how many things happen on your average creek seemingly a long way from anywhere and in the rain!!

Great-spotted Kiwi. A good site exists at Punakaiki. Go to the car park at the end of Bullock Creek Road just north of town. Park here and walk a few hundred metres to the track on your right. What a great spot. The good news is that the swirling, freezing fog leaving droplets on your lenses and eyelashes doesn’t dampen the Weka’s spirit! Four hours of walking around, waiting patiently,  only managed to result in meeting other hapless Kiwi birders doing likewise and more Weka’s than can comfortably be accommodated with a burnt stick!

Still the fish and chips and the open log fire at the Punakaiki Tavern are available up to about 9.00pm! Some Aussie country pubs could learn from this!

Okarito Kiwi. the supposed dead cert of the trip! We managed to get to Franz Josef, the nearest town to Okarito with motels and found a great room at the Rainforest Resort Motel. Love a motel with its own happening bar and restaurant 30 metres from your room. Nothing like having New Zealand Fantails on your deck in the morning too. It would have been much better if it had been a little warmer so we could have gone out to join them!

Booking a trip with the Kiwi man of Okarito, Ian Cooper of Okarito Kiwi Tours, was a promising start. On a long weekend though Ian asked us to move to a Sunday departure from our scheduled Saturday trip. No problem. Well, it would have been a sensational winter night for a walk on Saturday so we were really looking forward to the Sunday trip. Sadly the gods must be crazy (sorry) or at least they were having a moment. Sunday dawned, (well it was 11.00 ish before we could even guess it was daylight or it had in fact dawned outside) with a force 9 wind and some of that nice horizontal rain for which the West Coast is famous. A force 9 wind means the tour doesn’t go. So reliant on hearing the birds in the bush, scratching around the leaf litter is the tour, that it was “a fruitless exercise to go”! Hmmm, must remember that next time someone wants a Ground Parrot at Barren Grounds!

Rock Wren. How difficult can this be! Surely the Rock Wren would be kinder to me than it was thirty five years ago at the Homer Tunnel entrance where my previous visit was marred by a snow storm!

Well, yes and no! A first visit to the tunnel entrance yielded beautiful, calm zen-like conditions. Perfect! I’ll be able to hear everything! I did too as the tinkling melody I could hear flew into view. Two Eurasian Goldfinch do not a Rock Wren make! The only other tinkling melody in three and a half hours of walking, scrambling and ferreting around the scree slopes and tunnel walls emanated from the bloody Keas!

Not to worry a planned excursion on Milford Sound the next day would surely produce one on our stops to and from Milford. It would too had it not been for the wind and rain! Another four hours was spent under an umbrella, split between morning and afternoon visits, yielded more of the aforementioned Keas!

Eye to eye with an eye-catching Yellow-eyed Penguin. Aye aye! Photo by Alan McBride.

It was comforting too to meet a young Kiwi birder in the café at Milford who assured me “you should get one in 20 minutes or so”!  Ahhh, the confidence of youth! This combined with “you should get a Blue Duck down the Egglington Valley’ comment from the same guy really made my day!

The tour out onto the sound was a little early in the season for returning Fiordland Crested-Penguin which thankfully I don’t need for NZ or life list purposes otherwise it would have been 5 dips!

Still any trip where you end up on the Otago Peninsula at the Penguin Place, can’t be bad. The trenches at Penguin Place offer probably the best views you can get of a penguin, yes I know you can sit on Macquarie and other islands and at rookeries and have them walk up to you and I’ve done that too but looking at one eyeball to eyeball at two – three metres from deep in a trench is magical. Just magical.

For the non-birders, you can read from a slightly more positive perspective, about Alan’s exploits “In a Spaceship” in New Zealand this winter.