The Bull kelp in NZ coastal waters is really robust stuff, and seems to be quite common along the rocky shores of the islands.  The photo on the right is of some moderate sized kelp-wrack.

After posting earlier about how Māori use kelp bags for storing Titi, I found I had a picture of poha-titi (Māori kelp containers) after all: it’s from a NZ Dept of Conservation (DOC) explanatory trail sign (which explains the odd quality of the photo) on the Ackers Point track on Stewart Island.  The track leads through fairly intact bush ringing with Tui and Bellbirds to a headland overlooking the Foveaux Strait, the water which separates Stewart Island and the South Island.  In season Ackers Point is heavily used for nesting by both Titi (Sooty shearwater) and Hoiho (Yellow-eyed penguin).  Because we were there so late in the year there was no evidence of any nesting by either species.  But the young Titi might actually still have been huddled hidden in their burrows in the flax and beech trees next to the trail under our feet, waiting for their adult plumage to finish coming in any day so they could take to the chilly sea.

So, this is what drying rimu (kelp) bags look like, on their way to being stuffed full of plump mutton birds.  According to what I’ve read, the kelp is selected carefully, then the wider leaves are split, inflated and dried, then re-softened by working, like split suede.  It’s at that point that cleaned and boiled mutton birds are packed into the kelp “bags” with the birds’ own rendered and strained fat, then the whole thing is laced together with harakeke (flax).  In the old days it wasn’t uncommon for a bag to contain 20 or 40 birds!  (Check out this brief page on Māori kai — food — basics).

Now, you can simply order muttonbird online, and it comes to you looking like this, with all the hard work already done:

(By the way, I’m definitely not endorsing ordering muttonbird online, and not just for conservation reasons.  In the US, sea birds are protected, and it may well be highly illegal to import it here, like buying marine mammal products in Canada — you can buy them there, but you can’t legally bring them into the US.)

Photos: kelp, E. Shock; poha-titi, A. Shock

Afterthought: is it possible that a teenaged mutton bird is called a hogget bird?  And if so, is young bull kelp called calf kelp?

The Kiwi crossing sign is frequently reproduced on teeshirts, keychains, pins and buttons (called badges, in NZ, if you ever need to ask), and other tourist stuff.  It’s certainly charming, but we found this other Kiwi crossing sign in only one place, painted on the asphalt adjacent to the yellow warning sign.  With a few basic lines, it really reads Kiwi, like a good cave painting.

There’s also a penguin crossing sign, delightfully species-specific.  This is a Yellow-eyed penguin warning sign, from Stewart Island.  Does that mean it’s okay to not stop for Blue Penguin?(Photos A. Shock)

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.)

Occasionally Blupeng experiences the Whiny Electric Heater the people are obsessed with.  Its function eludes him, as cold temperatures are not a problem for a soft toy sea bird.  (Overheating on land is more likely to be a problem for a well-insulated penguin body, and flipperwings more thinly feather-lined and held akimbo aid in radiating excess heat.)

Besides, it works hard to max out at 57F — that’s positively balmy for a penguin!

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.

Blupeng rides on the Campervan dash.  He is seen here with the reflection of Heather & Robertson’s Hand Guide to the Birds of New Zealand, which, like a penguin, is up to the rain and rigors of the outdoors in NZ .

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…)