Thursday, May 20, 2004

Remember me?

I had such an amazing week on Tiri that it has inspired me to post! Yes, that amazing. Its one of the coolest things I've ever done. In Australia I became a birdwatcher. So as soon as I got to NZ I started learning about its birds. Also, wildlife here is pretty much just birds so not much else to learn about.

So with less than 2 days notice, absolutely no idea what to expect, some of the worst weather I'd seen in Auckland yet, I prepared to spend a week on a very small island. There is no food on the island but Barbara, the DoC ranger, assured me that there was a beautiful kitchen in the bunk house. So I also had to pack food for a week. One of my biggest fears in life is being hungry so of course I over did it at the grocery store.

I arrived at the island and was shown the bunk house which turned out to be really nice! I was staying in a room with 2 researchers who were studying robins on the island, Ana, and Fred. Ana was a terribly shy Canadian masters student who had been there a month and Fred was a Swedish wildlife biologist who was there for 2 weeks. He arrived the same day I did. The rest of the house was over taken by students from a nearby college who were there for 4 days.

My first day there Barbara showed me around and quickly went over some of the stuff I'd be doing and then I had the rest of the day off. So I picked one of the many trails and went exploring. So to say there are a lot of birds on Tiri is a huge understatement. Its amazing what pests and cats can do to bird populations. So being a predator-free island makes Tiri a literal bird heaven. Most birds on the island are endangered and hardly ever seen on the mainland. I stayed out till sunset and I was already in love with the island when I headed back to the bunkhouse to make myself dinner. After dinner, Fred and I decided to go searching for the nocturnal kiwis but had no luck and headed back. I was so tired and there was nothing else to do so I was in bed by 10!

The next day I started my morning routine of checking all the bird water troughs along the trails and making sure they were filled and clean. There is a family of endangered brown teal ducks that I checked on each day. They are fed a treat of bread everyday so that they are habituated to coming up to you so that they can be counted. After that I did what ever the rangers needed help with that day. Some of the things I did during the week were: weeding, planting trees, using the scary table saw in the workshop, searching an abandoned campsite to see if someone was trying to grow marijuana on the island, and beach cleaning. But I always done by 2 or 3 and had the rest of day to myself. Thankfully, the weather improved and most of the days were beautiful.

My favorite bird experience was watching the little blue penguins. There are hundreds that hand around the island. They swim and fish during the day and start coming close to shore around sunset and then struggle up on to rocks when it gets dark. They are so loud and sound just like cats sometimes. You can just sit on a rock and watch them struggle in the surf to climb the rocks and find a place for the night. They continuously fight with each other for space by chasing each other and by calling out (sounds like a trumpet) and its just the cutest thing!

I saw over 20 species of bird during my week there and on my last night finally saw a little spotted kiwi. You search for them with red cellophane-covered flashlights and when I found one it was only a few feet away and hung around for a good 5 seconds before hopping away. If I hadn't known what it was I don't think "bird" would have been my first thought.

I was hiking non-stop all week and was completey exhausted by the time I was supposed to leave but if I could have stayed I would have.

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