Yes, I have lots more pics from our New Zealand trip, but first, one of the locals.
I think this is as close as I’ve come to capturing the colors of the Superb Fairy Wren. Usually the chin and chest looks black, but in fact it is a dark blue (sometimes a bit purple-y) rimmed with black. Also in this photo, you can see how the males fan out the azure feathers below their eyes when putting on a display (as this little guy was doing, [note the slightly lifted wings] complete with vocalizations).
If you check out the Superb Fairy Wren at Wikipedia, you will notice that the blue on wrens in the photos seems lighter in color that our local wrens – and you’d be right. Tasmania has a slightly larger and darker subspecies Malurus cyaneus cyaneus. This is fairly common. Tasmania is colder than most of the rest of Australia and certainly colder than most of Australasia. This means that animals often need to be bigger to stay warm, and darker to blend in with a more forested environment.
Three of the most entertaining swindlers you’ll ever meet. Kaka – which following Maori language rules is both singular and plural.
The woman who manages Bell Bird Cottage (where we stayed on Stewart Island) assured us that Kaka came right onto the porch to beg for food. After two days of only seeing them at a distance we were starting to feel dupped. Then it rained, and suddenly a free meal on a dry porch seemed like just the thing.
(Imogen took this photo, nicely capturing the ambiance of the setting by including the plastic cow which “decorated” the window sill.)
This Kaka came right to the glass and took food from our hands. Note the scarlet rimmed belly feathers. The undersides of their wings are the same color and they are quite stunning in flight.
That would be a sight to see … 🙂
Hiya keres. Been waiting for this all week.
Unfortunately the rainy weather that brought the Kaka within arms reach also obscured the light to the degree that most of my photos were too dark to work with.
This is the best shot I could get of the Kaka’s underwings. The tree he/she is eating is the New Zealand native “Cabbage Tree” (a member of the agave family and an important food and fiber plant to the Maoris).
I was rather surprised to find that the two large parrots of NZ, the Kaka and the Kea, are both predominantly brown in color. I’m used to the predominantly green varieties, and Australia has some real doozies when it comes to brightly colored birds. But the Kaka fits New Zealand’s damp dark forests, just as the pink-breasted grey-backed Galah, which lives in huge flocks in Australia’s outback, fits so well with this red dirt country.
Kea, unusually for a parrot, live in alpine areas. We were told to look out for them at Franz Josef – mostly around the parking areas making food raids on tourists. Alas, we didn’t see nary a one.
We only saw this Kea our last morning in NZ, in a walk-through aviary at a wildlife park near Christchurch, where we also saw our only Kiwi birds (in a nocturnal house – sorry, no photos were allowed).
As you might gather from the name, this is one of the avian world’s finest singers. We heard it frequently, but our accommodation really should have been named “Tui Cottage”, since the resident Tui was by far the more dedicated singer (starting in at 5am).
A fine collection of New Zealand bird audio clips is available here.
Pronounced sort of like “wicca”.
Photographed on Ulva Island. In New Zealand, the lack of mammals meant that birds filled all the niches. Weka re actually “top level preditors”, eating pretty much anything they find, including other birds. It also means they have little fear of humans, and frequently came right up to us to see what we were up to.
The chick of the bird above. She didn’t seem at all worried when she wondered off leaving the little soot puff near us.
This is how close she got to Imogen (who is holding my camera bag).
Just call me Tenzing.
Nesting not far from the Weka chick was this Variable Oystercatcher.
When she thought I had gotten a bit too interested in her, she let out a peep peep, and this fellow showed up, presumably dad, trying to draw us away.
Getting decent photos under the forest canopy was nearly impossible, even when the bird was sitting right out in the open like this Bellbird was.
We were lucky to get even a glimpse of this endangered species.
I love playing spot-the-bird. This one took a few seconds.
Thanks for adding all the new bird pics!
No problem. I’ve got plenty still to post. Especially of the “spot the bird” variety.
If nothing else, their usually nice photos for getting a sense of just how lush the native NZ rain forest is. Too bad there is so unbelievably little of it left.
The whole rest of the South Island was covered with introduced pasture and pine plantations. It was literally shocking, the degree to which the place has been transformed from Gondwanaland fern forest to European plant and animal monoculture. I’m sure most of our fellow travelers had no idea, and just thought the lush pastures and lofty peak views were “pretty”.
I’m not sure which species of mollymawk this one is as the photo is a bit lacking in detail.
Backing up a bit. Before we got to Stewart Island and all the birds, we spent a day at Franz Josef, where we walked out to see the glacier and back along a nature trail.
The nature trail went strategically past a small pond which allowed for this view of the glacier.
to have those perfectly placed bodies of waters.
Wonderful shots — all of them, the birds (yay the birds!), the glacier, the eels (well maybe wonderful isn’t quite the right word for the eels).
I’ll post some more pics this afternoon, when I get back from Hobart. Some of those “there’s a bird in there somewhere” photos.
New Zealand has two species of freshwater eels, which can grow as long as 6 feet in length and live to be 80yo.
These eels lived in someone’s private lake, and for a dollar you could feed them a packet of cat wet food.
This is what it looked like when the cat food hit the water. I thought the fishing garden gnome was a nice touch. 😉
Love all the pictures keres, well except maybe these. 6 foot long eels look too much like snakes. [shudders uncontrollably]
I’m sure the largest eel in this lake was no more than 4 feet long. And, there are no snakes in New Zealand!
And, there are no snakes in New Zealand!
New Zealand just went to the top of the list if I ever immigrate. But eels look close enough to snakes to make me hesitate. 😉
I’m pretty sure they don’t have fangs. There was one wildlife park that lets you pet them, so they can’t be very dangerous.
Hi keres.
I don’t even like rubber snakes, so you can guess how I feel about something that is alive and looks like them. 😉
How do you feel about legless lizards?
Our big Blotched Blue-tongue skink occasionally frightens the beejeebers out of us because it’s head is very similar to a snake – and when it moves suddenly in the grass or under a bush our tendency is to jump first and ask questions later.
our tendency is to jump first and ask questions later
That’s my tendency with anything that looks like a snake. However, after the first 10 feet I do stop screaming. 🙂
However, after the first 10 feet I do stop screaming.
You are the very model of restraint.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a rattler, but I doubt there’s another noise that so screams “RUN”! I know I have. Of course, I usually go back to look at them after I get back control of my legs. They can only strike a few feet so it safe to look at them from a few yards away. Although I usually leave them be after a few seconds as they are obviously distressed by people.
Although we do have rattlers around here, I’ve been lucky enough not to see or hear one.
My response would be to keep running and keep screaming after 10 feet.
l’ll have to diverge from your “run when you hear the rattle” advice.
having lived in an area where they are very common for 37 years, my first reaction is to freeze, and figure out where they are…and then move slowly away.
sudden movements may/will cause them to strike, especially if it’s in the wrong direction, ie: towards them.
and l always worry that Bu’s going to scare one up on open space and get bit…so far, so good…knock wood.
lTMF’sA
Yes, I too worry about dogs and snakes. Luna was dancing around an Australian copperhead (very poisonous) in our front yard sometime last year. I hauled her away and then caught and relocated the snake.
I think your approach to rattlers is more sound than mind, but as I noted above, thought has never gotten a chance to enter into the equation. Lucky for me I’m a great triangulator and have always run from rather than to.
This is the one that lives near our house. I caught him and another male in a serious fight (note the blood on his nose) right before we left on vacation. So I separated them and took the smaller one to a friends house to live (and my friend was having a problem with snakes getting into his fern arbor – Blue-tongues eat baby snakes, so snakes avoid their territories). Male Blue-tongues will defend about a hectre as their sole territory so two in one place is a problem.
In the photo, Imogen is removing his ticks with tweezers. They have a terrible problem with ticks so we regularly catch and de-tick the resident skink.
Now I might could get along with another animal that gets rid of snakes. But, the de-ticking would be out of the question!
Everybody draws the line somewhere.
for a Hopeful moment.
(Yes, he isn’t doing anything but he so rarely goes with us and he probably doesn’t have all that many walks left that it seemed worth a picture.)
That’s very poignant. Sweet, sweet Hopey.
He’s got almost no strength in his back legs. It’s pretty sad but boy he’s still chowing down like a champ.
One of the suckiest things about having companion animals is knowing that you’ll outlive them. On the other hand, we obviously know this from the start and do it anyway – so apparently we’ve decided the benefits far outweigh the costs (that, or we’re just not very good at long-term planning).
My recent score with pets is pretty bad – I’ve lost far more to disease in their prime than to old-age. Here’s hoping the current crop breaks the pattern.
As for Hopeful, from what I’ve seen, he’s had the best dog’s life possible – a person could get envious (if they were willing to eat kibble, that is).
I read some time ago about the people who used cormorants for fishing, that when it came time to retire a bird, they purchased dog meat (an expensive delicacy) and soaked it in sake, removed the birds collar (which kept it from swallowing the fish it caught) and let the bird gorge itself till it died. When I’ve had to put an animal down, they’ve always gone out like a cormorant; getting as much of their favorite food as they could eat and whatever else they liked best before I took them to the vet. It helped me anyway.
It’s been the only downside for me. And we’ve been pretty lucky, the youngest was 10 (cancer) and the oldest was 16 (everything). It’s hard to go through but it’s a more than fair trade.
Thanks Keres. But aren’t vacation photos required to include at least one picture of the group wearing silly hats? Don’t hold out on us, dearie.
I’ll look through the photos again, in case I missed that one.
Fabulous pictures, keres. That Fairy Wren is incredibly – what a shade of blue.
We love our Fairy wrens. There are at least a dozen that live right around our house, and even live more down in the trees.
They’re very inquisitive and are often keeping an eye on Imogen and I in case we’re doing something that might turn up bugs. I suspect as they get more used to us through the generations we’ll have them right at our feet when we’re working in the garden.
Those are some fabulous pictures. I love the Superb (rather than mediocre) Fairy Wren, though I’m no sure which I like better; the name or the beautiful blues.
Australia’s Fairy Wrens come in the following species:
Purple-crowned
Superb
Splendid
Varigated
Blue-breasted
Red-winged
White-winged
Red-backed