61) Return to Te Wai Pounamu - the Waters of Greenstone

This being our research or "non-teaching" semester and therefore the time to 'go on holiday' we decided to spend two weeks traveling by camper van around the South Island of NZ. At 58,000 square miles, the island itself is1/2 the size of Colorado, so 2 weeks would be plenty of time to take in the laid-back vibe of Te Wai Pounamu - the Waters of Greenstone (the south island) of the Aotearoa - Land of the Long White Cloud (New Zealand). ( Lots of places and birds are referred to by their pretty indigenous Maori names).

Well - not even close. We envied the multiple folks who were there for 2-5 MONTHS! But in the next few blogs we will provide a glimpse at some of the beautiful and other things we managed to see in our short visit.

A Royal Albatross (Toroa Ingoingo), above. Note the Albatross drinks salt water and filters out the salt in a gland by their eyes. The salt is then excreted by nostril tubes through the bill--hence the nose drop on the bird, above. Although a chick is raised on land, it makes no practice flights and simply steps off the cliff into the wind. It won't walk on land again for 3-6 years and will spend more than 80% of its life at sea. It breeds only in NZ, but rides the circumpolar winds to feed on squid in seas off South America, turning along a route to the south of Africa and Australia, back to NZ. (info from A. Crowe, "Which New Zealand Bird?)







Geology in action, folded rocks.








New Zealand Fur Seals (Kekeno) off the coast of Kaikoura. After being hunted nearly to extinction, these guys are making a comeback and we actually saw quite a few of them in a number of places on various coasts of the South Island.











Ho, hum, I'm a seal waking up from a nap!

(A power lounger, like many of the other seals we saw--it's got to be hard work swimming and finding food in the cold ocean. These guys made draping yourself over a pile of rocks for a nap look comfy!).


A typical NZ "hedge" used as a windbreak around the country. In this case, protecting berry bushes from the gales. We sampled the
berry ice cream--1 block ice cream + hand full of wind-protected berries, put in funnel with a spiral meat grinder type looking device, hand crank into a cone, and voila! Berry Ice cream cone!





Australia thought they had the corner on "large" objects, but NZ is a competitor... here's a large crayfish, and some type of fish. Maybe whitebait? Don't know my fishes...
























A Kereru or New Zealand Pigeon. Very pretty for a pigeon, and very LARGE in its own right.








This pretty flower was blooming everywhere.















We decided to take advantage of an "Albatross Encounter" boat tour to see Albatrosses and other cool sea birds. Just offshore of Kaikoura is
a deep ocean trench, where the albatrosses find their food. This is advantageous to seeing birds you don't usually get to see. I had always thought of albatrosses as only being creatures of the open ocean, so was pleased to be able to see them so up-close. Of course, albatrosses need to eat, too! The tour cheated by enticing the birds with a frozen block of fish livers. Apparently the albatrosses will be miles away by the next day, so don't depend on the chunk of food provided by us (that's the story, at least, and I'm sticking with it so I don't feel guilty about paying to see birds by feeding them. And we were told albatrosses are picky eaters--this isn't garbage food for them, it's healthy).


Albatrosses: "This poor bird was accidentally maligned by a poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The albatross was beloved by ancient seamen because it flew so far out from shore, it was usually the first indication of land seen on board inbound ships. In Coleridge's poem, a seaman killed an albatross then had to wear its carcass around his neck in penance." http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/albatross

















A northern Giant Petrel (above) .

Coming in for a graceful landing (left).

A Shy Mollymawk (with beautiful eyes!) (below). These girls and guys hung back while the Royal and Wandering Albatrosses chowed.

Lots of pretty "Cape pigeon" petrels (also known as the Pintado petrel (Pintado is Spanish for "painted", in reference to the species' clearly contrasted coloration--Wikipedia).













A Wandering Albatross in breeding plumage (note the pinkish feathers on the back of his neck). Albatrosses are classified as 'huge' seabirds, whereas Mollymawks are only 'very large'. The Wandering Albatross holds the record for the world's longest winspan of any living bird: 3.63 m (that's almost 12 feet!). See video (at bottom of page) to see these birds in action around the fish liver smorgasbord!































Hutton's Shearwaters, which breed only in the seaward Kaikoura Range.





A Northern Giant Petrel landing and showing his beautiful big wings.











Luckily, it was easy to find directions for our next adventure - the remaining questions was - where to go! So N it was - to sea kayak and camp in the Able Tasman National Park before heading off to Cape Foul (can't you just f-e-e-l the foreshadowing of things to come....?)