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.