Proper Kiwi birds are nearly impossible to take photos of.  Mainly because most kiwi birds are nocturnal and using flash is rude, but also because they’re hard to see in their environment, rummaging around in the deep ferny forest floor.  And anyway they’re terribly difficult to find at all.

But there are other, non-Kiwi birds who are not so shy.

Piwakawaka is the exuberant Maori name for the Fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa), a common native bird in New Zealand bush (areas forested with native trees and plants).  This is one cheeky chicky: they’ll flit right up and swoop in to capture any bugs that may be hanging out around you as you hike, sometimes following for quite a distance down the trail, sometimes nearly — but not quite — landing on you.

A couple of other birds do the same thing: the engaging Miromiro (Tomtit, Petroica macrocephala), the more reserved Toutouwai (New Zealand Robin, Petroica australis), so they are relatively easily photographed.  (These last two birds, the NZ Robin and the Tomtit are endemic to NZ, occurring nowhere else, while the Fantail also lives in Australia).

Top to bottom, here are photos of Piwakawaka (Fantail), an immature Miromiro (Tomtit), and Toutouwai (NZ Robin) (Photos by A. Shock).

NZ has lots of coastline, and there are plenty of opportunities to get out onto the sea.  During ferry trips, either getting to offshore islands or between big islands, or on small boats looking for sea birds, there’s almost always something to see — and not always birds.

Returning to the mainland from Tiri Tiri Matangi, the ferry captain spied a pod of orca feeding on sting rays in the relatively shallow water of the Hauraki Gulf — here’s the dorsal fin of a male.

On a pelagic trip off Kaikoura, eastern South Island, we came across a small group of endangered Hector’s dolphins — quite tiny dolphins with distinctive paddle-shaped dorsal fins.  There are actually two dolphins in this photo.  They’re a bit difficult to see, but there’s a dorsal fin visible on the left edge of the picture, and near the bottom right, (especially if you enlarge by clicking) you can see the shadow of a little dolphin just under the surface.  These guys were a bit shy, and didn’t sport around the boat.

(Photos E Shock)

…that’s the Takahe, a mountain-dwelling, tussock-eating, big-beaked member of the gallinule family (related to coots).  The bird was believed by ornithologists to be extinct, until G.B. Orbell “rediscovered” a population in the remote Murchison mountains of Fjordland New Zealand in 1948.  Since then heroic efforts have been made to secure its survival as a species, which are so far uncertainly successful (in 2004, there were fewer than 200 birds in the wild, and less than 50 in captivity).

Above is a free-living wild Takahe, photographed on Tiri Tiri Matangi sanctuary in the North Island of New Zealand — I’m uncertain that it appears to appreciate all the effort taken on its behalf.

Then take a look at the most excellent kid’s painting tacked to a wall (no name supplied) at the Fjordlands National Park Visitors Center in Te Anau.  Isn’t it perfect?

(Photos A. Shock)

Here is E, making a new friend in the Kauri Forest.  It may be big and green, but at least it doesn’t bite, like the Sand flies.

(Photo A. Shock)

Weasels and stoats are not welcome in New Zealand, although they live there.  But they’re not native, and as opportunistic and energetic predators they’re particularly dangerous for the few remaining species of indigenous birds, many of which are ground-nesters, having evolved on an island on which there are no native species of mammal except bats, and no snakes at all.

So we shouldn’t have enjoyed seeing a fierce European invader and eater of eggs and nestlings, but we watched this little stoat playing “kill the pine cone” around a heap of cut pine boughs at the edge of a pasture.  Its mock-predatory antics were so fast it defied being captured on camera, but when it stopped playing to check us out, E got a shot.

(Photo E. Shock)

Yes, and we did!  Also very large eels that live in very small streams, and giant crickets called Weta.  Moreporks (New Zealand’s only native owl) made themselves heard, although not seen.

The kiwi on the right is carved from Kauri, the huge New Zealand tree which isn’t like any other tree I’ve ever seen. The photo below is a Kauri, and not one of the biggest.  There aren’t many left on North Island — they were too tempting a source of building material for the folks clearing the native bush for homesteads and pastures, and it’s a mixed experience to visit the Kauri Museum, which is as much a glorification of the Kiwi Bushmen (loggers) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as it is a memorial to the great trees they harvested.

Easter mornings are often spent focused on the ground in an Easter Egg hunt, a ritual seeking delightfully chthonic goodies on a day of rising up.  But our Easter walk in Papago Park was filled with airy trophies instead: birds in trees.  And the birds were obliging. Once seen perched safely on high, they stayed to be photographed, preoccupied with their own activities — singing, like the Ash Throated Flycatcher (“k-brick, k-brrr”) and the Mockingbird, or glaring, like the Loggerhead shrike and the immature Cooper’s hawk.  The young hawk didn’t stir as we passed Its Fierceness fairly close to the trail: it appeared to be waiting on the tip of a palo verde snag for the warming air to create wing-filling thermals, so it could continue its northward journey.

Click on an image to enlarge; the Cooper’s hawk’s glare is better bigger.

(From top to bottom: Ash-throated flycatcher; Northern mockingbird; Loggerhead shrike; immature Cooper’s hawk.  All photos E. Shock)

Hen update with photo. The Stalwart Hen and her Nidlings (the Anna’s hummingbird and her nestlings in our backyard pinetree) are still hanging in there, despite a night of unseasonal wind and cool rain.  In this photo, the bottom side of the tip of one of the nidling’s beaks is just visible at the left edge of the nest, above a nearly horizontal pine needle.  From the upper window, I can see two nestlings clearly, but the window screen makes focusing a photo tough from there.  The two Nidlings have grown enough so that they fill the cup of the nest, and their little beaks stick upward over the edge.  Each day the beaks are getting longer and darker, but they’re still nowhere near final hummer-length.  Go Hen Go!

There’s a property of owls I call “Half-Dome Head.”  It’s a shape that’s noticeable in the profile of all owls, particularly the larger ones.  The Barred Owl to the right is exhibiting major Half-Dome Head.  If Half-Dome Head can be achieved when making owls in clay, the resulting effigies will be Especially Owly.

The name derives from the famous granitic dome formation, Half Dome, in Yosemite Valley, California, which bears an obvious resemblance to an owl’s head in profile.  The geologic Half Dome is forming largely by weathering: eons of sheet-exfoliation on the fragmented face of an exposed granodioritic batholith gave it the shape we see today.  (Appropriately, one of the most Half-Dome-Headed owls ever, the regal Great Gray Owl, is an uncommon resident of Yosemite Valley, see photo below: the color and texture even match).

In owls, the “Half-Dome Head” effect arises from the front of the Owl’s head (in other words its face, to use the technical term) being shaped like a radar dish, to be efficient at gathering sensory input — in other words, light and sound.  But take away the feathers and an owl’s cranium is shaped pretty much like a hawk’s, or even a chicken’s skull (check out these images).  An owl is after all a bird, albeit a fairly specialized one, so it’s built like a bird.  The forward-oriented flat face that we humans find so fascinating (probably for anthropocentric reasons) is due more to posture and feather-arrangement than underlying skeletal structure: the owl generally holds its bill slightly downward rather than forward like other birds.  This gives prominence to the distinctive “facial disc” — the specialized array of radar-dish-like plumage around an owl’s eyes and ears — and positions it so it functions optimally.

The owl’s Facial Disc is a precise specialization for nocturnal hunters who require every available bit of light and sound directed into their sensory apparatus to ensure the highest possible success rate while hunting.  Several features of the facial disc are noticeable: short flat-lying feathers sweep away from the eyes and “cheeks” so as not to impede forward vision; stiff vertically-arranged feathers edging the facial disc help funnel sound into the ear openings, which are asymetrically arranged on either side of the face behind the eye to create aural parallax (and are nowhere near the cranial tufts we commonly call “ears”); and rictal bristles (“whiskers”), which are specialized sensitive filamental feathers on either side of the gape (the flexible corners of the mouth which allow the beak to open and close), that enable the owl to perform preening and feeding activities — including the feeding of owlets — by feel, since their large eyes are immovable in the skull and so can’t focus efficiently at very close ranges.

But that’s just the flat front of the “Half-Dome”: the round back, the helmet-shaped fullness of feathers on the back of an owl’s head also transmits owliness to our perception.  This is also due to the owl’s skeletal configuration: the bird’s upright posture is possible because its skull is joined to a nearly vertical spine.  Most birds’ backs go off at a more or less right angle to their necks (think of a dove), somewhat shortening the curve at the back of the head.  But the feathers on the back of an owl’s head arc smoothly down to the back, which continues downward steeply.  The photo above shows Half-Dome head creating Owliness in an MLO (Moderately Large Owl) I’m currently working on for a client.

Photos: from top to bottom: IBO barred owl, A.Shock; Half Dome Yosemite, Carroll Ann Hodges, USGS; Great Gray owl, Canada (Sorry; don’t know who to credit this photo to); Three Star Owl “eared” owl effigy in progress, A.Shock.  And finally, a Gratuitous Cranky Owlet chillin’ with the Big Boys…