Living in Southern California as a kid, I was familiar with the massive, blade-leafed clumping plant widely used in landscaping called Flax, or New Zealand Flax.  So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see it growing everywhere in New Zealand, right?  Still, my first dim thought was, “Oh, they landscape with it here, too, just like in California…”.  But when I say growing everywhere, I mean everywhere.  So, after a bit, I realized that Harakeke (flax) is a native plant, and that Aotearoa is the True Home of Flax.

Not a grass, not a yucca, and NOT related to northern hemisphere flax of the genus Linum, New Zealand flax plants (Phormium spp.) occur naturally in a huge range of colors and sizes — supposedly over 2000 varieties — and grow on headlands, along rivers, at the beach, in the mountains, in beech forests, as single plants or in massive monospecific expanses. In spring, the blossoms on the long flower spikes are used for food by raucous Tuis and lovely olive Korimako, or Bellbirds (photo, right), or a handy perch the rest of the year.

The leaves have long been used by Māori to weave into creative and symbolic kete, bags or kits, and other articles of clothing and rain-wear, as well as amazing woven wall-linings in traditional buildings (photo below).  Very versatile stuff. Raranga, the art of plaiting harakeke, is laden with symbolic importance for Māori people, as an emblem of the survival of traditional culture.

One of my favorite campgrounds was at Curio Bay, where the flax stand on the headland was carved up into very private spaces.  From a distance, all you could see were the lids of the campervans (photo below) — a nice change from some of the parking-lot like “motor camps” you find everywhere.

(Photos A. Shock: flax on a seashore headland, North Island; Bellbird on old flax blossom stem, Tiri Tiri Matangi Island; flax wall-weaving between carved wooden wall panels from Te Puawai o te Arawa, a Māori carved house dating to the 1880s, now in the Auckland Museum; Curio Bay motorcamp, South Island)

You may be wondering about the much-posted Hen, a female Anna’s hummingbird, and her two nestlings, who were busy growing up in an Aleppo Pine in our back yard.

As far as we know, the Hen fledged her young successfully while we were in New Zealand. We’ll never know for sure, but the evidence supports a successful fledging. Two years ago, a nest failed when it was torn down by a predator, but this nest looks as if it lasted through a full nesting cycle: it’s intact on its branch and a little stretched out, the way spider-web-based hummer nests are designed to do to accomodate growing nestlings.  So, it’s entirely possible that the Stalwart Hen is sitting on a new nest at this time (although it’s past peak Anna’s breeding season in the low desert), and her fledglings are among the YOY (young of the year) Anna’s we see coming to the nectar feeders.

(Photo of female Anna’s hummingbird by M. Held, from Wikimedia Commons)

One thing the Southern Hemisphere does well is sea birds.  Albatrosses, gannets, penguins, prions, storm petrels, diving petrels, gadfly petrels, giant petrels, shearwaters, skuas, mollymawks, and more occur in baffling numbers of species (and nomenclature).  Normally, many of these birds are found well out to sea, over the deepwater pelagic zones.  But in tectonically active NZ, there are places where the continental shelf drops off into deep water quite close to shore — like at Kaikoura on the east-northeast coast of the South Island — and in those places you don’t need to venture far from the harbor for excellent seabird viewing.

The birds are accustomed to following fishing vessels, and close-up views are possible if you just chum a chunk of frozen fish-liver behind the boat.  Above a gibbering mob of Pintados (Daption capense, Cape “pigeons”) is joined by Nellies (Macronectes spp, Giant Petrels) and a couple of species of Albatross to joust over gobbets of yummy chum off the back of a small net-fisherman.

I’ve seen Albatross in Antarctic waters, sitting on the surface at a distance from the ship, or skimming adroitly behind the vessel, drafting over the huge waves of Drake’s Passage.  They’re enormous birds — the largest Royals and Wanderers have a wingspan of nearly 12 feet (3.5 meters).  A big wingspan means long wingbones, and when these wings are folded, they jut out behind the bird with a gawky elbowy effect, visible in the photo above of this Toroa, a youngish Wandering Albatross (Diomedea gibsoni).  The “elbows” actually extend almost as far as the tips of the primary feathers, a characteristic I haven’t noticed in any other bird.

The petrels and albatrosses are Procellarids, or tube-noses: in other words, their nostrils are enclosed in one or two tubes along their strong, grooved, hooked bills, a trait visible in the photo above.

As puffins are still eaten in Iceland, some species of tubenoses are harvested for food in NZ.  At this time of year, Māori are entitled to collect Muttonbird chicks (Titi, Sooty Shearwater, Puffinus griseus) from their nesting burrows in the coastal bush and mountains.  (The adults have already headed out to the wintering grounds, some as far away as the waters off the coast of California; the young are left behind to grow in their adult plumage.)

Traditionally, cooked Titi were packed in their own fat in kelp bags, where they stayed fresh for 2 -3 years.  I couldn’t find a picture of a poha-titi, a Māori kelp bag, but here’s a photo of a Titi (Sooty shearwater or muttonbird): it’s the smaller all-dark bird at the top of the picture.  The large and handsome bird in the foreground is a Buller’s Mollymawk (Diomedea bulleri).

Nowadays Muttonbirding is largely a commercial enterprise, for sale to restaurants.  Later in the trip we found contemporary Muttonbird on the menu of a very nice fish restaurant in Moeraki, but I chose blue cod, thinking of the bird we’d seen on the sea in Kaikoura.

(Photos, top: E. Shock: the snow-covered Kaikoura Mountains are visible in the background; middle, A. Shock; bottom, E. Shock. All from the Kaikoura pelagic trip.)

Left: Eastern Rosella feather (Platycercus eximius) with Kauri cone.  Rosellas are long-tailed, rainbow-colored Australian parrots who now live in NZ, too.

Below: Kereru feather (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae, New Zealand Pigeon) on leaf.

The Kereru is a very large pigeon, much bigger than Rock Pigeons, whose striking white, iridescent green-maroon plumage and bright red feet and bill blend surprisingly into the shadows and light at the tree tops. It favors areas of native bush, especially where giant podocarp trees like totara or kauri still grow: big trees, big pigeons.  Kereru sallies out into the sunlight from the tops in a swooping display flight, its wings making a noticeable whistling whoosh.

(Photos: Feathers, A. Shock; Kereru, E Shock)

It’s not all about birds: NZ‘s hot waters are as unique as its birdlife. The islands are tectonically active, and strange fuming waters seep gently and sometimes violently blow to the surface.  We saw lots of these places; here’s a sample from Wai-O-Tapu, in the volcanic plateau near Rotorua.

If you were a parrot, would you live in this chilly realm?

Yes, if you’re a Kea.  A large, endemic NZ parrot, the bronze-green Kea (Nestor notabilis) spends most of its time in high alpine areas and steep rocky valleys of the mountains of New Zealand’s South Island.

Kea can be easy to photograph because of some bad habits they’ve taken up, like hanging around places where people park cars in mountain turnouts, hiking huts, and ski areas.  They are industrious, strong-beaked and curious, and will methodically shred back-pack, tent, or windshield wipers just because it’s entertaining. The Department of Conservation has had to put up signs about this mischievous beakhavior:

Their destructiveness has gotten them into a lot of trouble with people, and although things are slightly better now that they are fully protected, Keas have had a bounty on their heads most of the last century, as sheep killers.

(This is as controversial an issue in NZ as wolf-attacks on humans in the US: do they or don’t they?  Apparently, video exists of Keas consuming flesh off the fatty area above the kidneys of living sheep…)

Though they spend a lot of time on the ground, Keas are strong flyers, and we were lucky enough to see a pair larking and calling loudly from over a high patch of beech forest in craggy, snow-dusted Fjordlands terrain.  This is more satisfying than seeing them scouting for food from tourists at the entrance to the one-way Homer Tunnel where vehicles must wait for up to 15 minutes for a green light.  But it’s easier to get photos of them there, and here’s one of a Kea doing a pretty good impression of a roadrunner.

(Photos, Top: E. Shock; Kea and Kea running, A. Shock)

This day was full of serendipity: we happened upon the lady with fernbirds in her yard; we went to Curio Bay for fossils, but happened upon Yellow-eyed penguins; and in between?  Hogget: it’s an age category of sheep meat between lamb and mutton, which we happened upon in the Invercargill Pack-n-Save butchery.

What a day!

Here is the AA signpost to Bushy Point Fernbirds, where Jenny showed us half a dozen of the mousy, streaky, spiky-tailed birds in her Joint-rush refuge property within 1/2 an hour. No photos of birds — too dark still, and they Fernbirds is furtive — but above is a photo of their lovely habitat: rush, flax, cabbage trees and manuka, all very NZ.

Mutton on the hoof or hoggett?  I lean toward hogget, but only the butcher knows for sure.  (“It’s the teenage sheep!” the girl explained in the grocery).

A freshly-moulted Yellow-eyed penguin just popped ashore for the night at Curio Bay.  It’s standing on Jurassic fossils of a buried podocarp and tree fern forest, but is more interested in preening than geology: penguins may have even less of a concept of fossils than of trees.

(Photos by A. and E. Shock; do click on each to enlarge, they’re so much better…)

When it’s a Weka (pronounced “wehkkah”, Gallirallus australis), a biggish flightless endemic NZ rail.

If you’ve ever tried to see a rail in the US, you know it can be an exercise in frustration, since our rails are furtive and well-camouflaged wetlands birds.  Designed to slip secretly through reeds and sedges (as in “thin as a…”), they are far more often heard than seen.

Not so in Ulva Island NZ (a small refuge islet just offshore of Stewart Island), where the Weka is common, and emerges from the bush in broad daylight to forage the low tide line on the beaches of the Island, where it looks like a chestnut-colored chicken with a project.  In this habitat, Weka function as diurnal Kiwi birds, because they occupy roughly the same niche as the Kiwi, who also leave the forest for the small-invertebrate-rich strands, except usually at night.

In fact, the indigenous name for the Stewart Island Brown Kiwi is Tokoeka, which according to some means “Weka with a Walkingstick” (the wooden kind, not the bug kind) in reference to the long bill of the otherwise similarly-shaped Kiwi bird.  One beach we visited had four in the vicinity, but if you should by chance miss the Weka, look for the undulating lines of big-toed footprints leading out of the bush.

(Photos by A. Shock)

…how the photo E was taking turned out (from this post), here it is.  Now you know what the ventral surface of a NZ walking stick looks like.