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.

(The second in a series: read the first here)

The next session at the Ganskopf Foundation Library was much like the last (the first I omitted because no drawing actually occurred, just filling out lengthy forms, and being issued a visitor’s ID).  This second appointment had also been arranged by Professor Harrower.  Once again he’d sent the list of three accession numbers to request for illustration by regular postal mail — I still haven’t met him in person.

After I’d signed in and passed through the security turnstyle, the same librarian, Miss Laguna, came out of the glass office to meet me.  Like last time, I was the only patron there.  I handed her the note with the acquisition numbers of the target owls.  She seemed to hesitate slightly when she saw it and read the numbers, but she disappeared into the secure stacks and left me at the same table as before to set up my graphite pencils, kneaded eraser, and pad.  This time I had brought my own desk lamp, and plugged it in where she had indicated.  The stronger directional light made a big difference: fluorescent ceiling lighting flattens everything out and distorts color.

When she returned, Miss Laguna had three “fetishes” on the black pillow, and as she walked two of them clunked together a little at each step.  Her casualness about this, after last time with the rubber gloves and special measures, was surprising.  These owls were larger than the previous selections, each being several inches long, and made of what looked to me like pine bark.

Here are brief descriptive notes from that session:

• GKC/orn247 a-b (shown above, green background): these two squat, eccentric owls are very similar to item GKC/orn872b which I drew last time: “eared” owls made of bark, probably pine.  They differ from the earlier one in that more deliberate geometric and linear carving has been made on their surface, instead of merely allowing the fissures in the bark to show owlishness.  My unscientific response is that these carvings are humorous, and they make me laugh.  I’ve drawn them together since they seem, at least by accession number, to be associated, although to my eye they don’t have much else in common, other than being small pinebark owls.
• The third figure, GKC/orn644f (right), seems too large to call a “fetish” — it’s 10.3 cm in height, and what I would characterize as anthropomorphic: it looks like an “Owl-man” because its legs are long and end in paw-like feet rather than talons.  As with the other two, the back is flat and un-altered, except for a vertical groove indicating the legs, which corresponds poorly to the one in the front.  I find this one a bit creepy: with no arms (or wings) and an uneven, stretched silhouette, it seems like a hostile doll, up to no good when no one’s looking.

But creepy or humorous, these pieces looked to me like indigeno pine bark carvings sold in tourist shops in Chihuahua — admirable folk art, but not “mystery relics” as they’re being called in the press, and not particularly ancient.  However, I’m not an expert.

I mentioned that to Miss Laguna, and asked if she knew why the Herr Doktor Ganskopf had collected them, but her answer was incomplete, something like, “They’re cute, but the other one is more…”  I asked if she meant Creepy Owl-man, but she said no, the simpler pine-bark owl from my previous visit. When I asked if it would it be possible to see that one again, she told me it was on loan that week, and lifted the pillow with the fetishes and took them back to the secure stacks.  I unplugged my lamp so the bulb had time to cool.

The only other thing that happened was that when I got out to the parking lot, it was raining and the car had a flat tire.  Glen, the parking attendant, offered to put the doughnut on for me, but I told him it was a rental, and they would fix it.  It took the rental company guy forever to find the place, but he finally arrived and took care of it.

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!