a visit to Zealandia

Over East­er, the weath­er sud­denly went all settled and warm. This is per­haps not unusu­al for autumn, but giv­en the crap sum­mer most parts of the coun­try have had for the past few months it was some­what unex­pec­ted. In fact the fore­cast for East­er was so dire that it played a reas­on­able part in us decid­ing to hunker down at home.

Any­way, Sunday being anoth­er in this run of fine, fine days, I thought we should have a fam­ily trek into the Karori Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary – a.k.a. Zeal­and­ia. This, for those unfa­mil­i­ar with it, is a large area of wooded val­ley not far from the centre of Wel­ling­ton that has been enclosed by a rat/c­at/­pos­sum/stoat-proof fence, with lots of fairly rare nat­ive spe­cies “lib­er­ated” inside. We’re mem­bers, but we nev­er remem­ber to vis­it often enough.

This time, I really wanted to get fur­ther up the val­ley into some areas I had not been to before, and also to see if I could spot and take pho­tos of the res­id­ent fal­cons (Kārearea).

The first of these object­ives was reached, but not the second. Lots of good exer­cise, and many not so good pho­tos were taken…

Geck­os
The first anim­als we saw were the beau­ti­ful green Wel­ling­ton geck­os sun­ning them­selves in their ter­rari­ums. These are pretty hard to find in the wild, being so cryptic. Even in their ter­rari­um it can some­times take a bit of effort to spot them, such is their cam­ou­flage.

I find the tex­ture of their scales very pretty indeed:

Sadly, these are not anim­als that can co-exist with rats, so we are unlikely to find any of these around our house, prime hab­it­at though it is.

Along the val­ley’s side
We were pretty keen to stay out of the way of the mass of people trundling along the flat, stroller-friendly val­ley floor. There are lots of tracks that twist up and through the pines and regen­er­at­ing bush.

In there, the city intruded only sporad­ic­ally. We could have been miles away, with only passing aero­planes to remind us where we really were:

The dry, brown pine-needles also provided quite a nice con­trast to the Hound’s Tongue fern that were every­where under the pines:

Then we heard a new (to us) bird­call. After a bit of care­ful obser­va­tion we found a pair of Stitch­birds (Hihi) in a bush full of ber­ries beside a track fur­ther up the hill… but just as we were bring­ing the cam­er­as to bear a pair of Tui (Tūī) arrived on the scene and chased them off. Tui are pretty aggress­ive and like to lord it over the loc­al Stitch­birds and Bell­birds (Kor­i­mako), to the point where spe­cial sup­ple­ment­ary feed­ers have had to be con­struc­ted that the lar­ger Tui can­’t get into.

That was the last we saw of the Stitch­birds. But there was still plenty to see and hear: par­tic­u­larly, noisy little flocks of White­heads (Pōpokotea), a few Waxeyes (Tauhou), the occa­sion­al Grey Warbler (Rirori­ro), and the omni­present Tuis – the lat­ter three spe­cies are not uncom­mon in Wel­ling­ton’s west. (The Tui only since the Sanc­tu­ary was foun­ded – they’ve got­ten enough num­bers now to spread right out across the city where­as before they were rare here.)

Robins
One rare bird we did see a lot of was the North Island Robin (Toutouwai), par­tic­u­larly fur­ther up the val­ley past the top lake.

The robins tend to be a bit ter­rit­ori­al and will stand their ground, often advan­cing quite close – which cer­tainly makes them easi­er to photo:

And judging by the angle on this photo you can see how close the robins get. This bird was almost under my feet.

I should­n’t call these wee birds cute. But I will. They’re cute.

Saddle­backs
The oth­er rare bird we saw a lot of was the Saddle­back (Tieke). This was a slightly amus­ing point, as we were passed at one stage by a chap whose fond­est wish was to spot one. There was one here just a minute ago, we told him, but he steamed on. Of course, once he was gone, the saddle­back returned.

Sadly, they seemed to hang out in the most shady spots and our pho­tos aren’t that fant­ast­ic. But I con­sole myself that I prob­ably man­aged to get the best pic­ture ever taken of a saddle­back­’s arse.

But aside from try­ing to take pho­tos of them, they were lovely to observe. I watched one bound up and down tree boughs, inspect­ing little leaf-falls and bark clumps for insects. When it had caught some­thing, it would bounce back through the branches arch­ing over the track to anoth­er saddle­back. The second bird per­formed what looked like beg­ging move­ments: bob­bing and wing flick­er­ing. It got the food – so it must have been a pretty much fully fledged chick.

Lazy bug­ger needed to leave home, I thought.

Back along the main track
We roun­ded the upper lake and rejoined the main track back down the val­ley. Sadly, all the Kaka (Kākā) were out and about – on fine days they appar­ently don’t like to hang around the Sanc­tu­ary and instead ven­ture out into the sub­urbs and bey­ond.

(One fine day in spring­time last year we had a kaka vis­it our house, four km from the Sanc­tu­ary. Judging by the vari­ous videos and pho­tos taken by people liv­ing close by, it appears kaka have learned that if a house has a deck, then one can obtain food by boo­gie­ing up and down the deck rail­ing in a fetch­ing man­ner (as our vis­it­or did). We wer­en’t smart enough to fig­ure out what it wanted… but then we would­n’t have fed it either. It flew away before I could get a photo.)

And so on to the top of the lake, where there was a couple of Takahe (Takahē) lurk­ing. OK, so they’re prac­tic­ally tame and wander about at your feet, so pic­tures are easy:

I don’t think it’s an espe­cially pretty bird (not that that mat­ters, and of course opin­ions vary), but I like the way the sun catches its eye.

The exhib­i­tion
Since the last time I’d been to the Sanc­tu­ary they’ve spent up large and built an “attrac­tion” – an exhib­i­tion and café. We skipped the café and had a quick look at the exhib­i­tion.

I found the whole thing a bit of a down­er: really inter­est­ing, but very very sad. Stuffed birds yes, but lots of good info and inter­act­ive dis­plays. But in the stair­well to the upper level there were plaques for a whole lot of extinct spe­cies I’d nev­er even heard of. And then there was the thing they show every half an hour, a five minute mont­age of the last 1,000 years of bio­lo­gic­al his­tory, a epic dis­aster movie show­ing just how all those spe­cies were lost. It was so sad and dis­turb­ing our young­est daugh­ter could­n’t watch it.

I ended up won­der­ing if, giv­en how badly the human race had f••ked up on these islands, was it worth try­ing to save any­thing that could­n’t now save itself? If all we humans dis­ap­peared tomor­row, the Sanc­tu­ary would be over­run with pests and every one of the rare spe­cies killed with­in just a few years. Is this “main­land island” a sus­tain­able approach to con­ser­va­tion?

But I sup­pose the point is not so much sus­tain­able con­ser­va­tion, as aware­ness that things need doing. But frankly, I’m not sure we’re up to the task of doing it. Some­times I think we humans are a plague, a dan­ger­ous mono­cul­ture of max­im­al resource util­isa­tion at the expense of all oth­ers. We’re at a stage now where there’s decreas­ing room for oth­er spe­cies, except those that can live in para­sit­ic or com­mens­al rela­tion­ships with us.

What a happy thought.

Home again
I nev­er got to see the fal­cons close up – maybe anoth­er time. Even so, I’m not likely to get pho­tos as good as these by Steve Attwood, who hung out in the Sanc­tu­ary for days get­ting them.

Still, we had a lovely walk of around eight kilo­metres, which made me happy. East­er was not wasted.