The Lady of the Lights

Real-time

I can die happy!

Lady Luck shone down on me last night. Well actually, it wasn't Lady Luck but Lady Aurora Australis, the elusive and shy Southern Lights. 

Here's the best of a small bunch of shots taken around 11pm on a dark and spooky beach last night. The upward pointing beams dance from one side to the other of the aurora. It's a good aurora if you see them and even better if you manage to see a 'picket fence', a group of smaller, very bright fence stakes floating above the beams. In a cloud free sky these beams would be dancing well up into the heavens. 

I've been waiting four years to capture the Aurora, I follow a couple of Facebook Aurora pages and a website with up-to-date information regarding solar wind and flare activity (they cause the lights) and predictions on when to expect some action. 

I've often been in the wrong place on the right night, or in the right place on the wrong night, or it's been raining or there's thick cloud, or I've forgotten to check the alerts, or there's been no internet so I can't check the alerts, or it's been too cold (many good Auroras happen in the depth of winter).....you get the picture. Can you tell I've not been bitten too hard by the aurora bug? There are Aurora chasers out there who'll drive miles and stay up all night when the lights are playing. And then go to work the next day and do it all again the following night. I'm keen but not that keen. Yet.

Back to dunes and away from the house lights.

Unfortunately the best night in this recent burst of activity was the night before last while we were tucked up in a valley in the middle of Dunedin surrounded by bright city lights. So we moved out of town and down to Taieri Mouth on the coast. Not the best place but a good spot given the short notice. No water for reflection but at least with a  reasonably clear view looking south. I still had to contend with house lights as you can see in the first photo. I walked down to the water's edge hoping the Lights would be reflected in the retreating tide, instead the house lights came into view and just as the aurora kicked off! Not long after the cloud rolled in and the show was over.

As you probably already know, the aurora is not often visible to the naked eye. Many people are disappointed after seeing them, they're expecting to see brilliant greens and crimsons or for them to be bright like the Northern Lights. If they are seen, they're usually in various tones of white with a hint of colour. Last night the lights were clearly visible once the beams started dancing, the sky was a moving spectacle, bright with just a shade of colour.

This photo (with a little less colour) is roughly what I could see with my eyes when I arrived. The camera is much more sensitive, it picks up a lot more detail and colour as the shutter is held open for several seconds allowing more light in than the eyes do. Camera settings and good processing bring out the colours, although sometimes people can be a little heavy handed with their colouring.

I got a bit distracted while waiting to see if they'd be any more activity and took a photo of the stars looking north over the river towards Dunedin. The night sky is such a fascinating and magical place.

I'm easily distracted. Here another one looking out to sea, that's Moturata Island just off the mouth of the Taieri River. You can see my shadow on the sand...several shadows as I move about during the 20 second exposure. I'm silhouetted against the orange light coming from the wharf, a long way behind me. Those curves through the atmosphere low down in the sky have a name. I need to research a little more to find out what they are called and why they happen.

Earlier in the evening I captured this lovely sunset over the river estuary- until I have a little more experience with Aurora shooting I think I'll be just as happy with my sunsets.

And actually, I'm only halfway to dying happy, I still have that hoar frost to catch. 

Birding Bonanza, Stewart Island- Part 3

Continued on...from Part 2

Well, we've seen island birds and beach birds so I guess that only leaves sea birds. We booked a Pelagic (ocean-going birds) Tour with Rakiura Tours and met Matt our skipper and guide down on the wharf on a sunny and calm afternoon. Great you say?Well not really, because for a change it is best to have a windy day (which means a choppy sea) when you go sea bird spotting. The wind helps them with their lift and they spend more time in the air around the boat than sitting on the water. Ocean going birds thrive on wind and here in what is known as the 'roaring forties' there's usually plenty of it.

There were just three of us on the tour along with the skipper, which was excellent, as we had plenty of room to move about the boat and get good views. We pulled away from the wharf and immediately half a dozen albatross swooped in behind the boat to follow us out of the harbour. Halfmoon Bay is home to quite a number of fishing boats-commercial & pleasure- and the albatross spend a lot of their time scavenging for scraps as the boats return to base filleting their catch along the way. Just think the birds get more Blue Cod than any of us!

Matt pulled up within a short distance and the birds immediately (crash)landed beside us. This handsome guy with the superb eye makeup is a Buller's Albatross, also known as a Buller's Mollymawk. Mollymawks are a group name for medium sized albatrosses.

Buller's Albatross are the smallest of the albatrosses and are endemic to New Zealand. They breed in four main colonies on the Snares and Solander Islands in the south, the Chathams to the east of NZ and Three Kings Islands in the north. There are estimated to be around 30,000 breeding pairs spread through these islands.

Not the famous 'Grumpy Cat' but there is a resemblance there don't you think? Isn't the colour of his bill just gorgeous.

The next bird to slide in sideways is another Mollymawk; the slightly bigger White-capped Albatross. This guy is a little worse for wear, he's has an eye injury on this side. Which is not surprising when you see them fighting over fish scraps. That sharp bill would be deadly in a fight.

The White-capped Albatross is also endemic to New Zealand with 99% of the total population (98,000 breeding pairs) breeding in the Auckland Islands.

Matt starts the boat up again and we head off around the coastline, we're going to check the rocky shoreline for penguins. We leave the albatross bobbing about on the water behind us but it's not long before they take off, catching up quickly and swooping in behind us, gliding and dipping along in our wake. What magnificent birds they are.

Everytime we stop to check for penguins, at least half a dozen birds land around us. They're hoping for some scraps but so far nothing is forthcoming.

They soon take off and head out towards the open ocean quickly being replaced by others that fly in. I have a feeling they spend all day doing circuits from Halfmoon Bay out to the Muttonbird Islands and back again, looking for boats along the way.

We're looking for the endemic Fiordland Crested Penguin/Tawaki which are confined to the shore at the moment because they are moulting.

Fiordland Crested are one of three penguin species that breed on New Zealand mainland. Their breeding range extends along the South Westland coastline to Fiordland and the islands of Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island. We've only ever had a glimpse of the Tawaki when we were doing a tour of Doubtful Sound, so I'm keen to, hopefully, get a close up view.

Matt found a penguin holed up in a cave- none of us could spot it, even through the binoculars, although we thought we could just see a white bib. It wasn't until I uploaded this shot that I could see that it was indeed a shy penguin. We let it be and carried on around the coast. Matt told us we'd return later in the afternoon when perhaps it would be out, standing on the rocks.

We passed a number of beautiful private beaches and houses with amazing views but saw no more penguins.

Matt turned the boat seawards and we headed out into Fouveaux Strait, towards the Muttonbird/Titi Islands. There are numerous groups of islands (approx 36 in total) located around Stewart Island and they're all know as the Titi Islands- it's where the Muttonbirds or Sooty Shearwaters, a member of the petrel family, return to nest after around 7 years at sea. They return to the same burrow that they hatched in. It's also where Rakuria (Stewart Island) Maori have come for hundreds of years, and still do to a lesser extent, to gather a traditional food source, titi chicks. They hunt them out just before they are due to fledge, when they are big and fat and still located in their nest burrow or flapping about outside learning to fly.

There are at least 20 million mutton birds world wide and Rakuria Maori harvest around 250,000. The season begins on April 1st and is over by May 31st. It's here that I have to admit that I actually had Muttonbird at a restaurant we visited while on Stewart Island. It wasn't a salted bird which is the traditional way of storing them and while I was happy I tried something new I don't think I'll be repeating the experience. It tasted very gamey, a little oily and was quite stringy. Nothing to write home about.

Here's a small flock of muttonbirds we passed along the way. I was totally absorbed with the albatross that I failed to get a close up of the titi.

We stopped again for a raft of tiny Little Blue Penguins/Korora which were feeding ahead of us. This is the world's smallest penguin, it's around 25cm tall and weights about 1-1.5kg. We've seen Little Blues many, many times especially when we were boating but the closest encounter we had was on an island near the Tairei River mouth when we found a dozen or so hiding in a rocky crevasse.

Little Blues forage out at sea during the day and then return to land under the cover of darkness. Many visitors to NZ take tours or find places to sit and watch the 'penguin parade' each night. Even on Stewart Island word is passed around about the Little Blues that come home beside the fuel tanks on the wharf at Halfmoon Bay. And every night there's a parade of people that quietly file in behind the tanks to find a spot to sit and wait for these cute little guys to make an appearance.

I went to see them one evening and saw four penguins come home; it was high tide unfortunately(for us) so they were able to swim in quickly and disappear into the darkness behind the rocks. Others that were there were very excited all the same even if I was a little underwhelmed. This lot quickly swam away, disappearing under water as soon as they could.

Albatross continued to fly in to check us out and fly off again as soon as we moved. They wheel and soar effortlessly on their long narrow wings. I'm spell-bound, I could watch them for hours as they soar and dip behind us, often catching up and passing our speeding boat. 

They are able to hold themselves just off the water, their wing tips appear to just touch the surface as they fly. Perhaps the tips are like cats whiskers and they can judge the distance by touch.

For all their grace and beauty in the sky they don't seem to have perfected their landing too well; using their large webbed feet as rudders as they clumsily surf to a halt, face planting the water as they settle.

Albatross are attracted to offal from fishing boats and it is thought that fish-processing waste makes up a large component of their diet. They also feed on surface fish and squid and can do shallow dives. We find a small boat on a fishing tour and instead of the gulls we would normally expect to see around a boat we find a flock of White-capped albatross.

We hung around the boat waiting to see what else arrived might arrive....more Buller's...

and many more White-capped...

We moved off a little way and Matt reached underneath the rod holder to bring out the secret weapon; a bin of fish heads and skeletons.... and then it was 'game on'! Birds came from all direction, crash landing on top of each other, squabbling and fighting over the fish.

Albatross have the great capacity to extend their throats so they can swallow large pieces of food. If you look closely at the photo below (click to enlarge) you can see a bird at the back swallowing a large piece of fish. Other birds have their gapes wide open. For a size comparison, you can also see red-billed gulls flying overhead hoping for a chance to grab any food going spare.

Here's a close up of the action as white-capped albatross fight over food. Their strongly hooked bills grasp the food whilst the sharp edges are used to slice it into manageable portions. Although here they just grab and swallow. 

It's not long before a different bird flies in and drops himself right in the middle of the melee; this is the Southern Giant Petrel, also known as the Sea Vulture and the largest of petrel species. 

Slightly smaller than mollymawks, the Giant Petrel has a large and distinctive hooked bill with two large tube nostrils that are joined together on top. They are not the most attractive birds.

Here are a couple of photos showing the size comparison- petrel, white-capped & a red bill gull in the background...

Petrel and a White-capped Albatross...

Giant petrels will attack and eat smaller species of seabirds although they are generally scavengers and are frequently seen around anything dead and floating. The traditional seafarers' name for giant petrels was "stinkpot" which is very apt as apparently the birds have an intense foul smell, like purifying flesh. We couldn't smell anything except fresh clean sea air! 

Southern Giants breed on ice free islands around the Antarctic Continent and are mainly a winter and spring visitor to New Zealand waters.

Here he is getting right in there...

And here you can see he's not afraid to come close either, the white-caps look a little afraid of him...

because when he wasn't around they were up close too...

Although they ignored him when he came back in for another feed...

We left the albatross behind (or did we.....when I looked out the back of the boat a number were still escorting us) and headed for the Titi Islands passing a small rocky protrusion  on the way. Atop the rock were a number of smartly attired Stewart Island Shags including the pied morph which has striking black & white plumage and one bronze morph (left) which appears dark brown but is iridescent in the right light.

We skirted around one of the Titi Islands, Herekopare Island,  looking for a different penguin, the Yellow-eyed Penguin/Hoiho, but all we could see were a couple of guano covered lookout points. Matt told us the parents, followed by the chicks, had used the mounds as look out points over the last few months. We were too late, the chicks had fledged and everyone had gone swimming.

We did see plenty of NZ Seal/Kekeno pups though, very well disguised amongst the rocks- see if you can find them all. I count ten.

Here's a couple of cuties we disturbed playing in the water.

With no different sea birds or penguins spotted on the island, we headed back to Stewart Island to check for those elusive Fiordland Crested/Tawaki. The penguin we saw hiding in a cave hadn't moved so we moved on around a point and there on the rocks ahead of us were three crested penguins! We were quite a distance from them and they were only just visable to the naked eye. Tawaki are very timid birds and they rock hopped away from us as soon as they saw us quietly creeping forward. They jumped and waddled up into another cave where two of them stopped to peer out. Check out those prominent crested eyebrows.

We stopped and Matt fed out the last of the fish skeletons to the few albatross that were still with us. You can see a lone Buller's in one of them too. Being smaller they lacked a bit of confidence around so many snapping white-caps.

Once the feeding frenzy was over we motored around the point to the otherside of the cave where the penguins had disappeared into and sure enough, just as Matt had predicted, they had come out and were down near the water line. Not for long though. They hurried back to the cave. 

We left them to it while Mat made us afternoon tea; a welcome cup of tea and a piece of banana cake; a great way to finish an awesome afternoon. Highly recommended and well worth doing.

And that's it- a detailed account of our Stewart Island bird encounters. It was a privilege and a pleasure to view such an amazing variety of  spectacular and beautiful native birds. Our virtual list is getting shorter.

Slope Point & Weir Beach, Catlins

We called around to the family to say our goodbyes and at long last said farewell to Invercargill and headed back on up the coast towards the Catlins, we stopped in for a coffee at the farm and then waved them goodbye too. "At last" we said, "We're now on our adventure proper" 

Since leaving Tauranga we have been travelling to visit family in Hawkes Bay & then onto Invercargill to be with family for Christmas. We've taken our time & enjoyed the journey but we've always had in mind that we need to be somewhere soon. Now we are free & easy, we can do anything we choose, we can stay for as long or as short as we want. We only have ourselves to consider. Famous last words.

This time we were able to stop as we passed over the Mataura River so I could get some shots of the dozens & dozens of little ramshackle huts & whitebait stands that line both sides of the river. The photos don't do it justice, but you can see that river twists and turns quite a number of times by the position of the huts along its banks.  The huts stretch way back into the background here and there are also dozens more huts further up river for a good few kilometres.

Once through Fortrose at the southern end of the Catlins coast we were back onto a gravel road travelling through mainly sheep farming country.

I wondered about the story behind this road's name. Imagine if you lived on it, explaining it every time you gave it out. How many would believe you too.

Not too far along we then turned into Slope Point Road. We were headed for a site, Weir Beach Reserve, on the edge of an estuary that allows CSC (certified self-contained) vehicles to freedom camp. And what a great spot it is, a large grassy area with a single toilet (a contained long drop) and a small water tank with a continuous supply of crystal clear spring water.

The site is located beside a huge estuary that drains out into Haldane Bay, it really is huge and very shallow, at low tide it is one great mud (in the upper reaches) & sand mass. It's hard to imagine that so much water flows through the very small entrance out into the bay. This is just the bottom end of the estuary looking towards the mouth. 

It's a great area for exploring & bird watching; there are dozens of Royal Spoonbills. They are becoming a bit too common now that we've seen so many! Unlike up north when there are just a few dotted here and there.

There were 3 other lots of campers here but the best spot was still vacant so we were thrilled to finally set up the fifth-wheeler bum into the wind (for when it returns, which it will) instead of broadside as we have been at the camping ground in Invercargill. The day had started out overcast but the cloud cover burnt off and by early afternoon it was a brilliant sunny day with not a murmur of a breeze. At last, we'd found the sun.

I bet you thought the Bluff was the southernmost point in the South Island. Well it's not; it's Slope Point an isolated & windswept site overlooking the Southern Pacific Ocean & the eastern side of Foveaux Strait. Slope Point is 7 kilometres further south than Bluff and is just up the road from where we have set up camp.

This fabulous view of Haldane Bay is looking north from the top of the hill behind the estuary which you can't see as it's tucked out of sight behind the greenery at the middle left foreground. The expanse of deep blue water you see just above it is called The Reservoir, a manmade coastal lake tucked into the rolling farmland. Curio Bay is further behind. I love the thistle foreground and the sheep in the middle. Along with the surf beach, it's quintessential New Zealand!

Later in the afternoon we drove out to the end of the road before returning to walk down to Slope Point. It was getting late in the day otherwise we would have given the sandy track at the end a go. I had visions of getting stuck & having to spend the night out here or having a very long walk home.

Up on the exposed cliffs the wind was whipping straight through us, the sea was wild and the waves huge as the tide pounded them onto the rocks. Most visitors to this area would pull in at the walk to Slope Point, if they drove a little further on they would find this huge sea cave tucked in beside a narrow canyon.

We could not get too close to the cliff edge here as the covering tussock was flat and slippery! One miss step and I'd have been on my bum and over the edge!  I felt a bit safer taking this shot further down the edge as there was a bit of height between me & the edge. I love how the hebes are growing thick & wild here & in their right environment! Another expensive plant from the garden shop.

Looking back towards Slope Point; it obviously got it's name from the gentle slope down to the edge. A tiny white dot on the point is the marker, you can also see a few cars parked on the road at the top left, this is where you walk from across private land. The walk is closed during the lambing season

Following the pilgrimage down to the Point.

The plants around Slope Point itself were quite unusual, a mix of spongy groundcover & tiny silver tussock grass (sold for around $5 a small plug at the garden centre back home) The ground cover, which I had growing in my garden in Tauranga, has tiny little white flowers. The exposed dirt & rock was smooth and rounded probably from all the salt spray & wind. And that would be a tarn if it was in the mountains.

You don't get a sense of scale here, but these are big cliffs & quite scary to be near, the noise was terrific as the waves crashed and thundered onto the rocks below.

You can tell that it's a harsh environment in this area, the trees grow at a 45 degree angle.

Underneath and on the off side of most of these macrocarpa shelterbelts which dot the landscape, are the remains of old homesteads (you can just see the roof edge here); the trees were planted to provide shelter for the early settler's  homes.

This scene reminds me of the megalithic stone passage tombs we saw in Ireland.

Haymaking; the grass has been cut and then turned by a tedder to dry, it is now ready for the baler to come along. The baler arrived just as we passed and by the time we returned the paddock was dotted with big green hay bales.