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Over the years Jack Clyne and Rosie Stewart have shown me a great deal of their island country. It has been my pleasure to work with them and learn from them. I was prompted to do this post because Jack sent me the Kea book that he always brought on tour with us. It arrived the same day that Rosie informed me that her kōwhai tree was in flower and attracting a gang of tui that were wildly slurping the nectar – those two are a couple things to Google (I mean the plant and the bird not Rosie and Jack).
Rosie lives outside Auckland and Jack just north of Christchurch on the east coast of the South Island. Auckland is a city with a grand harbor located on the northern part of the North Island. There is one other largish island, Stewart, and many many small bits and pieces. The country of New Zealand has respected the Māori heritage and has used many Māori names for towns, plants, festivals, and animals. Thus the two names that you will now Google –right?
It may surprise you that a post on a parrot doesn’t include either the hot humid tropics of South America or the vast dry wonders of Australia. This is a parrot like few others; and those few others are also from the land of the Long White Cloud.
Aotearoa, or New Zealand to the late comers, has been a land alone for a long time. This fact, and the total (excepts for a bat or two) lack of mammals allowed the birds to develop all sorts of exceptional behaviors and looks.
From a naturalists point of view, it wasn’t “spoiled” by humans until after Captain Cook and Joseph Banks arrived in 1769. It may have been visited by the Chinese very early on and the Māori and Dutch later – but it was the expanding empires of France, Spain, and Great Britain that really consumed the great oceans. It was Great Britain that controlled and developed both Australia and New Zealand. Cook arrived well before English annexation (1840) and his travels opened the area to many other adventurers. Sealing, whaling, and nutmeg collecting (more valuable than gold for a while) drew explorers and entrepreneurs from all over the world.
When I say “spoiled” I mean that the native environment was altered, invaded, and changed. Plants and animals that had adapted to a particular and successful way of life were exposed to, and wiped out by, creatures with another way of life. Captain Cook’s ships probably brought rats and mice and maybe mosquitoes. He released chickens in anticipation of a free-range buffet in anticipation of his next visit (Cook made three trips to New Zealand). On his last two trips he carried ducks, chickens, cattle, sheep, and goats (perhaps their genes persist in the Arapawa Island goats). It was recorded that he presented a breeding pair of goats to a Māori chief and released several pair on the island called Arapawa.
The tunnel is narrow and seemingly unfinished though now paved; the walls are as the sledge hammers left them; rough and rugged and as permanent as any mountain on earth. It was a depression era project and almost all the digging and chipping done by the gnarled hands of five men with picks and shovels. The Darran Mountain area where the tunnel is located is plain and simply gorgeous; especially if you get there on one of the few dry and sunny days, The workers at the site eighty years ago recorded that there is direct sunlight only half the year; due both to rainy weather and the mountains that allow a very late morning sun and an earlty afternoon sunset. Having been there several times in the rain I can say that the rainy days are also spectacular as hundreds of waterfalls and cascasdes develop to drain water for the near vertical mountain walls.
My favorite time at the Hermitage Hotel at the base of Mount Cook is just around sunrise when the Kea will arrive at the maintenance area and putter around the leavings from the day before. It is as if they are looking for bits and pieces to finish a project.
One of the DOC signs implies that you should keep your eyes on your shoes as the Kea will “toy” with them.
My favorite time at the Hermitage Hotel at the base of Mount Cook is just around sunrise when the Kea will arrive at the maintenance area and putter around the leavings from the day before. It is as if they are looking for bits and pieces to finish a project.I mentioned that there are several New Zealand parrots and a few parakeets as well. The Māori names for the parrots all seem to have the same base sound; Kea, Kakapo, and Kaka. The Kakapo is a large, nocturnal, flightless parrot that is now very rare and restricted to a few predator free islands.
This parrot is one of the creatures impacted by the European predators that arrived on the islands; cats, stoats, possums, and dogs became predators of the many flightless birds; goats, deer, sheep, and now cattle have in turn greatly altered the native vegetation. New Zealand has an active program to remove these alien creatures (and plants) and try to return to the avian rich wildlife it had before humans arrived.
On The Road With DEC 