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.
