Tag Archives: Conservation

Oh! To go to Otago!

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Still Saturday 21 March 2026 – Apart from being in the right place to be collected for our afternoon excursion, we had to get back to the hotel so that I could pick up the Nikon and the Big Lens, for the outing was, if not a walk on the wild side, at least a coach ride on it. Accordingly, Danny, one of our guides from Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours, came along to add us to his small busload of people to be taken out to the Otago Peninsula to see what wildlife possibilities it threw up. (Monarch has been quick off the mark – it has the URL wildlife.co.nz, getting which must have required some nifty keyboard warriorship.) A quick look at the terrain of the area will reveal that the peninsula is part of a largish volcanic caldera with other volcanic bits also part of it,

so any journey on the peninsula was going to be up-and-downy and left-and-right-turny. We had two more punters to pick up at Portobello before we could go in search of non-human quarry. Danny explained that the Portobello name came about because of the Edinburgh link with Dunedin; Edinburgh has a Portobello (something I didn’t know – my geographical knowledge is truly being expanded on this trip) and the settlers on the peninsula decided that Dunedin needed one, too.

On the drive there, we saw some lovely scenery.

or, rather, Jane did. I was on the wrong side of the bus. Danny also pointed out various bits of wildlife that we passed, mainly birds. Again, I was on the wrong side of the bus, but managed to snatch a quick snap of a Caspian Tern,

which is apparently not a common visitor to New Zealand.

Having picked up our two final punters, the tour went to Hoopers Inlet, to find New Zealand sealions. There was a sealion creche

where an on-duty mother sealion kept watch whilst pups played.

A little along the beach, other females took it easy

whilst our group and others took advantage of their proximity to get photos. The normal rule is to keep 20 metres away from sealions, but there’s a fence here which allows people to get close.

It’s worth noting that we were cautioned against getting too close to sealions, particularly the blokes. They can (a) get grumpy, (b) take offense and charge and (c) weigh upwards of 300kg. Very different from the advice we got for the fur seals in the Antarctic; they might essay a charge but vigorous arm waving is enough to dissuade them. As I’ve said before, fur seals aren’t true seals – they’re more like small furry sealions. Sealions and fur seals are what are called “eared seals”, and one can just about make out external ears on each. Sealions, though, are larger, and the males are more aggressive; they prefer sandy beaches whereas fur seals tend to colonise rocky outcrops. And they both have different skeletal structures from the “true seals” (e.g. leopard seals, elephant seals), which have shorter legs and arms and thus much more difficulty moving about on land.  True seals swim with their feet; eared seals with their arms.*  It’s easy to see the arms and legs of a sealion when it’s in motion,

like this mother, who we think was coming over from the sunbathers either to tell its progeny off or to take over babysitting duties.

I looked away from the sealions on occasions (the kids’ play is terribly cute but after a while it gets somewhat predictable) and managed to get a photo of an incoming pied stilt.

After a while, we decamped to another beach, Allan’s Beach, just round the corner, where there were a few more sealions, including a large male. Apparently the older they are, the darker they get, a neat trick that humans have to use chemicals to emulate.

There were other sealions on the beach, but very little of what you might call “activity”,

so we eventually moved on to the next phase of the tour which, for us, was a boat trip. The boat in question was the Monarch (which guesswork makes me think might be the inspiration for the company name).

It was skippered by Buddy, who has taken the beardedness that typically marks out New Zealand boat skippers to a new level.

The objective of the cruise was to go out to view the Otago Albatross Colony out at Harrington Point. This is the colony for which (you’ll remember, of course) the return of the first albatross every year gives rise to joyful pealing of the St. Paul’s bells. Buddy piloted the boat and simultaneously gave a running commentary, demonstrating a good knowledge of what the birds were up to. His delivery was somewhat idiosyncratic, but the content was very interesting.

The headland in question

features a lighthouse, unsurprisingly, I suppose, but you’ve seen lighthouses before so I haven’t included a photo of it. Looking closely at the terrain enables you to see where albatrosses have their nests

which are just mud piles built up year on year and returned to each year by the parent albatrosses, which basically mate for life. It wasn’t nesting season, which is why there were no birds there. Where they were was further across and up on the cliff

where young albatrosses were going through the process of pairing up. There would be displays on the ground so that males and females could suss each other out,

and a lot of “Ho, watch me glide!” as a tactic to impress potential mates.

Northern Royal Albatross

The albatrosses that were landing and taking off and gliding about were Northern Royal Albatrosses. Whilst we were there, we also saw some White Capped Albatrosses, but they were merely interlopers and not part of the colony.

White-capped Albatross

White-capped Albatross

There was a certain amount of non-albatross action on the cliff face; some cormorants of a species whose name I can’t remember, but which Buddy said were quite rare,

and a vast mass of gulls clinging to the rock face

(with some shags among them).

On the rocks below were some fur seals (rocks, you see – told you so) and there was a comedy moment as one young pup decided that he would climb up and play with the gulls.

He really went a long way up

until eventually his mum came along to tell him that it was time to come down for his tea, or some such.

After our short (one-hour) cruise, for the final component of the day’s outing, we went to the opera. For the ghastly shrieking singing art form, I would have been reluctant to join in, but this was The Opera, the Otago Peninsula Eco Restoration Alliance, a private eco-reserve dedicated to conservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and education [their Oxford comma, not mine, I hasten to add], which is an entirely different kettle of fish-eating birds (and other wildlife). Starting in 1985, the property was transformed, by previous land owner Howard McGrouther and conservationist Scott Clarke, from a working farm into a crusading endeavour to save endangered penguins. It’s a good story of a concerted and linked effort to conserve and protect a species of penguin that was in danger of extinction – the yellow-eyed penguin, or hoiho. The reserve allows tourists to view hoiho while out of sight in specially built trenches. There’s also a rehabilitation facility for penguins, a safe place where injured, starving and unwell penguins (principally hoiho, but including other species also) can be treated for their injuries, fed and brought back to health before being released back into the wild. This was our first stop. It was a slightly bizarre experience, because we saw a compound full of basically motionless penguins.

The reason for this is that it was the moulting season for these birds. Unlike many birds which moult small quantities of feather all the time, penguins undergo what is known as a “catastrophic” moult, in other words they exchange their entire set of feathers for a new set all in one go.

Moulting is an energy-consuming (and I think quite uncomfortable) time for penguins, which is why they don’t move around much when it’s happening. Whilst they moult, also, they cannot enter the water since their plumage is temporarily not waterproof, so they can’t swim to feed themselves. Ain’t nature a strange thing? A couple were doing a bit of mutual preening

but otherwise all was still. The main type of penguin was, indeed, the hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin;

but there were others, too: the fjordland penguin

and the erect-crested penguin.

(a subtle difference – the erect-crested penguin’s two crests are nearly parallel rather than in a sharpish V shape).

After the enclosure, we moved out into the open-air part of the reserve,

where nesting boxes have been set up for incoming wild penguins.

They were largely empty, but one had at least one inmate and clear evidence of moulting.

We also saw a couple of fur seals

and, round the corner, some more, including another young’un with climbing ambitions. He’s the small brown maggot in the grass at the top of this picture.

By this stage it was beginning to get dark and cold and the hoped-for emergence of penguins onto the beach hadn’t happened, so we called it a day at that point and began the long and winding road back to Dunedin and our hotel.

This was our last stop in New Zealand, bar the necessary stopover in Christchurch in order to catch our flight home. So the only prospect for the morrow was the drive up to Christchurch. As ever, Jane had made sure that we couldn’t just get in the car and drive the whole way, oh dear me no. There were a couple of Things To See en route, and so I’ll regale you with those details in the next entry, which may well be the last for this trip.

 

*  If you want to be nerdish about fur seals versus true seals, then here’s what ChatGPT has to say in the matter:

All seals belong to the pinnipeds (the fin-footed marine mammals), but they split into two main families:

  • Otariidae – the eared seals, which include fur seals and sea lions
  • Phocidae – the true (earless) seals

Walks on the Wild Side

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Wednesday 18 March 2026 (cont’d) – The story so far….

Having wended their scenic way from Te Anau to the scruffy and mural-infested settlement of Bluff, our heroes, Jane and Steve, had braved the elements in a nerve-racking crossing of the Foveaux Strait and had completely confused their reception committee by buggering off to find their accommodation themselves. Now read on….

Stewart Island consists mainly of Rakiura National Park, which is a haven for many species of wild birds, untroubled by the stoats, ferrets, and weasels that humans brought to the main islands (to control the rabbits they also brought to the main islands – sigh) but neither rabbits nor mustelids made it to Stewart Island. It’s not entirely predator-free; there are possums, rats, cats and hedgehogs, and in February 2025, the Department of Conservation (DOC) announced a pest eradication project on the island to address these. One of the species which has thrived on Stewart Island is the tokoeka, or Stewart Island Kiwi, a type of southern brown kiwi that’s nearly as large as the northern brown kiwi. We’d seen other brands of kiwi in carefully controlled environments, and our mission on the Island was to try to see the native species in the wild. Unsurprisingly, more than one company exists to help people on this mission; the one we were booked in with was called Ruggedy Range. Although the Stewart Island Kiwi can be active during the day, our tour was booked to start at 8.30pm.

We presented ourselves at their office at the appointed hour; it was closed and dark, but we remained hopeful that something would happen eventually, and it did. A lady called Furhana emerged and bade us (and five other people who had drifted up in the gloaming) into the office, were she explained how she planned to go about showing us kiwis.

It’s clear that she really knows her stuff and that she had a tried and tested way of maximising the chances of seeing these elusive creatures. Personally, I found her style a rather irritating mix of didactic and scatter-brained, but she made it clear what she was going to do and what processes we were expected to follow. She also gave us lots of information about the birds, some of which we already knew and some of which was new. So, for example, we knew that the female was only just bigger than her egg, from which hatches a chick which is pretty much ready to go and forage for itself; we knew that their nostrils were at the far end of their bill, not at the head end, as this helped them to understand what they were grubbing for. But we hadn’t appreciated that their sight is very poor, their sense of smell is very keen and their sense of hearing very sharp. She also showed us some video footage. One demonstrated how careful you have to be not to scare the kiwi away with unfamiliar noises. Another demonstrated their really weird call. And a third demonstrated their fierce territoriality – they will fight by chasing and kicking an opponent, and can even fight to the death.

We had been given instructions to avoid wearing scented deodorant or insect repellent and to wear sturdy shoes. She also wanted people to wear “quiet” clothes, so my Peter Storm jacket got the thumbs down as I would make unwelcome plasticky rustling noises at the wrong moment. She provided alternative jackets for me and a couple of the others in the group and off we went in her van.

Surprisingly, she didn’t go off into the national park area, but actually stayed on the roads within Oban. The reason for this is that it’s easier for people to be quiet on asphalt than on gravel tracks or forest trails. So she drove around the local roads, using a red light torch to try to highlight any kiwis which might be about, fossicking in the hedgerows or verges. Again, surprisingly, the kiwis would be grubbing around near people’s houses, as this was good hunting for worms and insects. She found one really quite quickly and so we got out of the van as quietly as we could and followed her in line astern as she headed towards the kiwi she’d seen. I wasn’t really sure of when I was allowed to take photos, so I did nothing more than watch whilst the bird – a juvenile, maybe 18 months old – fossicked around, and eventually headed off out of our sight. Furhana then found an older female – probably the juvenile’s mother, given the animals’ territoriality – but this one was too wily for us to get any photos or videos before she disappeared. We went back and found Junior again, and this time we were able to get photos

Head well stuck into the ground looking for food

and even some video.

(Photographic footnote: this was all taken under red torchlight, and I have desaturated the footage so it appears in monochrome.)

This counted as a moderately successful outing (we met someone later who’d seen five the following evening, but still) so we were happy with the evening’s chasing about. It was a perfectly clear sky and the stars had been brilliant in the firmament above us, whenever we got the chance to look up from trying not to fall over in the dark, make too much noise, or otherwise embarrass ourselves; we got to bed just after midnight.  Our wildlife adventures on the island weren’t over, though; as we had another tour booked for, well, later that day.

Thursday 19 March 2026 –  Lying very close to Stewart Island, Ulva Island is also part of the Rakiura National Park. It’s much smaller than Stewart Island, being just 2.67km², and the bit where punters are allowed to walk is only about a quarter of that area. That said, the island is a sanctuary for both birds and plants, holding species that on the mainland of New Zealand are rare or have died out, and the walking that can be done is a good opportunity to see these. We were booked on an afternoon’s ramble on the island, so I looked out the Big Lens and we set off to meet our guide.

One might have been forgiven for expecting the trip to Ulva Island to start from the Oban waterfront, but no, we had to walk to Golden Bay Wharf, just over 1km from our accommodation. We took the opportunity to have a coffee in the South Sea Hotel

and looked along the Main Street,

(which gives you an idea of the scope of Oban as a metropolis) before embarking on the walk over. One kilometre might not seem much, but this is Stewart Island, so nothing is on the flat,

and we actually had quite a steep climb over a headland to reach the wharf

where eventually our guide, Emma from Ulva’s Guided Walks, joined us, as did a water taxi,

which took us on the five-minute journey over to Ulva Island.

It turned out that we were the only two punters in the group, so we had Emma to ourselves, which was great. She was very knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of the island, and was also a trustee of the island’s charitable trust.

We were bidden to to brush our boots before boarding the taxi, but that was the only precaution needed before going there; and, interestingly, it’s an open conservation area – no special permission needed to visit, no control over the number of visitors. It seems to work OK, because the island is effectively predator-free and the Department of Conservation maintains a sharp watch for any rats which might have swum over from the mainland (they get maybe one a year, but one year the incursion was a pregnant female which meant a lot of work to clear it).

We pottered about for some four hours, wandering over to a cove where we saw a pair of (fairly young) New Zealand Sealions

before heading off on the forest trail

across the top of the island. As well as plying us with a wealth of information about the endemic and native trees and plants (most of which I’ve forgotten), Emma did the usual guide thing, which I envy greatly but can’t emulate, of spotting things I didn’t even know were there, so we saw a decent variety of birds on our afternoon.  A couple of the birds, though, weren’t difficult to spot – Stewart Island Robins: a female

and a male.

New Zealand robins resemble British robins in many ways, but the two groups are not closely related.  One way in which they are similar is their territoriality; on our walk we crossed between the territories of different male robins, and they emphatically do not overlap.  Also, like British robins, they are dead cute and not afraid of people,

and also terrible death-dealing bullies to other, lesser species. Difficult not to find them attractive, though.

What else did we see? Well, some sightings were of species we’d seen elsewhere, such as this Weka, which is however a smaller Stewart Island subspecies,

a local parrot, the Kaka (also a Stewart Island subspecies),

and a Morepork owl

which was tucked away in a very inaccessible corner of a tree. There are kiwis on the island, but we only got to see a burrow,

which might have once been for a Little Blue Penguin, and repurposed by the kiwi.

Some birds have been reintroduced to the island, such as the Saddleback

and the Red-fronted Parakeet.

We also saw some local orchids and a very unusual blue fungus.

We saw other birds, too, but I was unable to photograph them, as the buggers won’t keep still: Yellowheads and Riflemen (the local wren, with a call so high-pitched that it can go beyond human earing). So it was an engaging afternoon and I was pleased with the photos I managed to get.

After taking our return taxi ride back to Stewart Island, we decided to walk up to the Observation Rock Viewpoint, which gave us a nice, erm, view

and then we walked back down into Oban

and rewarded ourselves for the extra effort of all that uphill work by returning to the South Sea Hotel and consuming some of the local produce.

OK, Bluebird is nationwide in New Zealand, but the gin is definitely local there – and very good it is, too.

That was it for our Third Island activities; the morrow would see us take the ferry back to the South Island and continue on our way. We have one more major destination before we head to Christchurch and our return flight to the UK (via Singapore, by the way – our original route through Dubai has been changed). So stay with these pages to find out where we headed next and what we got up to whilst there.

 

 

Landscapes, Wildlife and a Feeding Frenzy at Cradle Mountain

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Tuesday 10 September 2024 – When we looked out of the window this morning, it had clearly rained hard during the night, but it was difficult to tell if it was drizzling right now or whether the weather was just that air-borne moisture you get when you’re in a cloud. Anyway, it wasn’t bucketing down as we walked round the lodge’s lake to breakfast, and there was possibly even the hint of a lift in the weather.

On the basis of various weather forecasts, we decided that rather than wrap ourselves up in something warm and stay indoors, we should go for a walk. Not obviously, by any means, though.  Just down the road from our hotel is the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre,

where we went to get our Parks Pass and also a ticket for the shuttle bus which would take us to one of the well-known walks in the area, a circuit round Dove Lake. The total cost was not small, but, as with the Russell Falls park, it was clear as we walked around that there was a lot of work involved in maintaining paths and other facilities, so it was money well spent.

The terrain we could see from the bus

underlined how wet the place was. Basically, we have been wet and cold since we left Hobart, and we asked the hotel receptionist if this was normal. She said, emphatically, that it was not; in the 12 seasons she’d worked in Cradle Mountain, this was the first time they’d had such consistent rain for such a long time – every day for two weeks.

The shuttle bus has a few stops en route to Dove Lake, the first of which was at the Ranger Station;

they were clearly expecting me and wanted to make sure that I stayed safe.

At Dove Lake, the prospects for spectacular scenery were a little less than uplifting

but since we’d made the effort (and paid the bus fare!) to get there and it was only drizzling, we grimly struck out on the 6km Dove Lake circuit. This is largely a well-maintained path

with steps to help with ascents and descents

and boardwalk to get you across the tricky bits. Every so often, the drizzle would stop for a few minutes, and one could begin to make out the reason that the area is called Cradle Mountain,

and the general scenery, whilst being exceedingly moist, was not unattractive.

As we worked our way along the path, the weather lifted a little more, the cradle became clearer to see,

and we could see that there was snow on the upper slopes of the mountains on the other side of the lake.

Every so often there was something to remark on, whether it be multiple Pandanus trees

or some extra highlights among the greens of the trees.

We reached the far end of the lake

and continued on the path, through an area called the “Ballroom Forest”.

It’s clearly a forest, and probably rainforest at that, but we couldn’t fathom the reason for its other name.

We noticed at this point that the top of the cradle was beginning to clear, and one could actually make out snow on the slopes.

The unrelenting treeness of the view gave way to rock at one point

though in the event it meant that one had to duck as one went past – there was a distinct lack of headroom.

We carried on, along paths that were easy to follow but more difficult to walk on – there were more uneven surfaces, and the unremitting rain of the previous days meant that there was, more often than not, a river running along the middle of the path, requiring fancy footwork for those, like me, who were not wearing boots and didn’t want wet feet.

The return half features quite a steep climb

at the top of which a pied currawong came to ask us why we were breathing so hard.

At about this time, the weather really did lift and we could see the cradle quite clearly as we looked back,

but the lump we’d just climbed over was getting in the way, and we wondered if we’d miss out on a clear view of the mountains before we finished the walk.  The clouds did swirl back in as we passed a boathouse

but eventually, our luck was in as we reached the point on the circuit where the Iconic Cradle Mountain Shot could be captured.

There are even instructions on a noticeboard as to how to post your attempt at the shot on social media. That’s how iconic the location is.

In the end, it was an enjoyable walk, as it ended with the sun almost shining, and there being no rain, so we were glad we had made the effort to get out. As we drove back to the hotel and I concentrated on avoiding the craters in the road, Jane suddenly yelled “wombat!”. At first, I thought this was a critique of my driving, but actually it was because there was, indeed, a wombat beside the road, so we screeched to a halt so we could take a closer look. This was my first-ever wombat,

much more interesting than the wallaby which was quietly lying a little further away wondering what all the fuss was about.

Not only did I see my first wombat in this area, but also my first-ever pademelon!

so we were very happy as we got back to the hotel.  We had a short rest before we had to go out again, on the day’s booked excursion to a place even closer than the Visitor Centre. As we drove there, we passed a couple of cars off to the side of the road, a sure sign that there was Something To See.  In this case, there were a couple more wombats, just grazing away beside the road. I got some video of one of them,

and we carried on to our activity, which was at a place called Devils@Cradle. I guess its name gives away what we’d find there:

Tasmanian Devils, an endangered species of marsupial found only on this island. We had booked to see them being fed, which happens late in the day, as they are basically crepuscular creatures, but we turned up early so that we could take a look around and see what other creatures were being looked after there.  These included Quolls, of two different sorts: Eastern Quoll

(also seen here in a dark morph)

and Spotted Tail Quoll.

These, like the Devils are (a) marsupials, (b) endangered and (c) nowhere near as cute as they look. All three creatures are ravenous meat eaters and not to be treated lightly; as far as they’re concerned, humans are just meat, and so trying to pet them is likely to end in tears, as in fingers being torn off hands. Each animal has hugely strong jaws – ounce for ounce stronger even than hyenas – and their jaws can gape extraordinarily wide, which helps them as they tear and rend. This one, though, was just yawning.

The Devils@Cradle centre, whilst undeniably a tourist attraction, is actually a serious scientific endeavour as part of conservation efforts concerning these creatures.  The Tasmanian Devils, particularly, are at risk, mainly because of human activity, killing them often out of fear (they can make a blood-curdling screeching sound if they’re in disagreement among themselves) or because they can be a threat to domestic animals. A result of this depleted population is a lack of genetic diversity, and a rather unpleasant – transmissible – cancer has struck a large majority of the Devil population. Devils@Cradle has a small but significantly cancer-free population of Tasmanian Devils to help preserve the species. Its decline is very unfortunate, because Devils have an important role to play in the environment; like hyenas, they can hunt but also clear up remnants of carcases left by other predators. Sadly, if these carcases are roadkill, the Devils themselves are threatened by traffic; in their eagerness to consume the carcase, they just pile in and will still be on the road as the next vehicle comes along…

The Quolls too are under threat from urban development and, particularly, from the feral cat population, so the establishment is also involved in maintaining a breeding population and managing reintroductions.

Devils@Cradle, though, has no government funding, so depends on visitors for its money. One of the attractions they offer is a chance to see the animals being fed. It’s a very well-organised and information-rich activity. In our case, our guide was Sarah,

seen here displaying the wallaby legs that she would be using to feed the Devils. She was very knowledgeable, engaging and informative about the creatures, the need for conservation and the work that the centre is doing.

If you are of a sensitive nature, I suggest you skip the rest of this post, as it features images of bits of animals being torn to shreds.

Still here?  OK, here are some still images of Devils being fed

(note the currawong, which is hanging around in case something is left over) and the quolls ditto.

Note that Sarah doesn’t just throw them the meat, because then they would just grab it and run for cover; to ensure they stay out for the punters, she attaches it to a hook so that the spectacle can be watched.

They may look cute, but, like the Bugblatter Beast of Traal, they’re very ravenous.

Here’s some video which might really put you off your dinner. You Have Been Warned.

It was a very interesting evening – informative and educational, albeit cold and wet as it rained towards the end of it, not that the animals cared.

So ended our day at Cradle Mountain. Tomorrow we head back east, for some R&R at Launceston in north central Tasmania. We have no formal activities booked but you can bet your sweet bippies that if it ain’t raining we’ll go for a walk. Obviously.