Beautiful and Endangered

This is the critically endangered member of a large family. He’s the Regent Honeyeater, endemic to southeastern Australia. There are 187 species of honeyeaters. This is the one that’s critically endangered. The reason: agricultural development has led to the loss of the kinds of trees and shrubs that produce nectars making up about 85% of the bird’s diet.

There are no hummingbirds in Australia. The honeyeaters, which are the size of cardinals, are as close to a hummingbird as you’ll find there. They have a long, slightly curved bill adapted for getting nectar from plants. They can’t hover, so you see them acrobatically jumping, twisting and turning through shrubs and trees, feeding on the nectar. And with their striking black and gold feathers, they are gorgeous.

Kerkeru

Meet the kerkeru. This big bird—about 20 inches long and nearly two pounds—is the native and endemic pigeon of New Zealand. Kerkeru is its Maori name, and that’s what most folks call it. But it’s also known as a wood pigeon, because it lives in wooded areas. Their diet is mainly the small fruits of the trees in their habitag. They play an important ecological role, as they are the only birds capable of eating the largest native fruits, and thus spreading the seeds intact.

I took this photo on Tiritiri Matangi, an island near Auckland that’s a wildlife sanctuary. But I also saw them in the tree in my cousin’s front yard in suburban Auckland. So they’re fairly common. But getting a clear shot of a perching kerkeru was very uncommon for me, so I was thrilled to have this one posing for me!

An Appropriate Name

Meet the Superb Fairy-Wren. I don’t know how it got that adjective attached to its name, but it sure fits. Like several other breathtakingly beautiful birds in Australia, this little guy is very common. That doesn’t mean we ever got tired of seeing them. Far from it. He’s only about five inches long, but that brilliant blue makes him impossible to overlook.

There are 15 species of fairy-wrens in Australia; they are not related to the true wrens of the Northern Hemisphere. Why they’re called fairy-wrens is another mystery to me. They eat mostly insects, of which Australia has no shortage.

This is one of the birds I was most eager to see and photograph on our recent trip. My wife was first to see and take a picture of one. I was down on the beach at the 12 Apostles taking some pictures while she stayed atop the cliff and spotted one hopping around. She’s quite proud of that! I got this shot a few days later at a nature preserve.

Superb, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Big Bill

I took this picture of a pelican coming in for a landing one morning on Kangaroo Island, in South Australia. The cook from our hotel had walked across the road to the beach with a small bucket of fish scraps, as he apparently does most mornings, and the usual crowd of gulls and pelicans were there to greet him and get a free meal. The way the sunlight is hitting the bird’s wings almost makes it look like a painting, but that’s just how it came out of the camera.

Big bill is not this bird’s name; it describes his most notable feature. The Australian Pelican has the largest bill of any bird, up to about 20 inches. They look bigger than white pelicans we see in the U.S. and it’s all because of the bill. Their bodies are actually pretty similar in size. This picture does’t show you how big the bill is, but I love this one because I don’t get many good shots of birds in flight. But I’m working on it.

Rara Avis

The strange and ungainly bird you see here is a Takahe. It is indigenous to New Zealand and it’s critically endangered. The takahe was thought to have gone extinct in the late 19th century. But in 1948, they were discovered on the South Island. According to our guide, this is one of only 249.

It’s a flightless bird weighing about six pounds and standing about 20 inches tall. It is the largest member of the rail family. The takahe was almost wiped out by a combination of over-hunting, loss of habitat and the introduction of predators.

I took this picture on the island on Tiritiri Matangi, about a 45 minute boat ride from Auckland. It’s one of five off-shore islands were they’ve been relocated, and there are a few other places, as well.

Seeing such a rare bird in the wild is thrill; a real birding highlight of our trip to Australia and New Zealand.

Inverse Proportions

This is a sulphur-crested cockatoo, so named for the yellow crown of feathers on its head. For those of us here in the U.S., it’s an exotic bird. For people living in Australia—at least in all the parts we visited—it’s as common as a blue jay or mockingbird is to us.

That was impressed me most about this beautiful bird; just how common it was from Queensland down through South Australia. What impressed me almost as much was what I describe as its inverse proportions: how can such a lovely bird have such an ugly song? Cockatoos are as loud as crows. Maybe even a little louder. And their harsh, raspy squawks are decidedly unpleasant.

They’re also bold and curious birds. One dropped in on the front porch of a cabin on which I was eating my breakfast. It sat a a few feet from me, patiently waiting for a handout, but to no avail.

“Cheeky buggers,” said the cabin’s owner when I told him about it. He said they’re also quite destructive. They’ll chew the bark of trees, and even eat the wood on housing. He said that’s why he had all his cabins’ window casings made from metal. Cheeky, ideed.

Gannets

This is my favorite picture from our visit to a gannet colony last month just south of Napier, New Zealand.

We almost didn’t get to go there. Last summer when we were planning our trip to Australia and New Zealand, we had booked an excursion with a company that takes people along the beach and up to the gannet colony. But about two weeks before we were to go on the excursion, we heard there had been a landslide at the beach, effectively putting that tour group out of business for a while. We called them and they confirmed this bad news. But they also mentioned another tour group that took a different, overland route to the gannets. We called them and reserved our spots.

We rattled along narrow dirt roads in a bus filled about about a dozen other bird lovers, mostly Dutch. And once at our final destination, we were able to walk right up to our fine feathered friends and their babies.

These sea-going birds hatch and raise their chicks here. When the babies are ready to fledge, about a year after birth, they jump off this cliff and fly about 1200 miles to a spot in Australia. They spend a few seasons there, and eventually return to this spot to raise their own families.

We got as close as a few feet to some of these birds; they didn’t mind us at all. The only thing we minded was the smell. As they feed their young be regurgitating fish they’ve caught and eaten, well, enough about that.

Milestones

We hit two milestones today. One, this was our last full day of this marvelous vacation. Two, and much more important, this is Roslyn’s 65th birthday!

I checked my email this morning to find a receipt from Hertz. They got their car back and no further charges are owed. Case closed.

We spent a few hours this morning and afternoon with cousin Carol. We took the harbor ferry to Double Bay, one of the tonier suburbs, where we strolled around the shops and cafes and then had a nice lunch. Carol and her husband Victor will be in the U.S. this fall, and we hope to meet up with them then.

This evening, we celebrated Roslyn’s birthday by taking a dinner cruise around the harbor. We met a lovely couple from Utah, the food was pretty good, and the night time views were beautiful.

The cruise also had a pianist and singer/violinist performing one of the oddest sets we’ve heard since the Sweeney Sisters were on SNL. We especially liked hearing “Karma Chameleon,” followed by “My Boy Lollipop” followed by “Love was Made for Me and You.”

The dinner cruise was a fun way to end what has been a great trip. As Shakespeare wrote, “Our revels now are ended.” We’ve been away from home for 39 days now. We’ve met family we didn’t even know we had. We’ve encountered strangers who are now friends we’d be happy to host in our homes, should they ever visit Atlanta. We’ve walked 165 miles and driven more than 1,500. We’ve taken more than 3,000 pictures. And we’ve had a great time together. We’re very lucky, and we know it.

We started talking about taking this trip not long after we were married. We had been looking forward to it for so long, I was a little worried it couldn’t possibly meet my expectations. And yet it exceeded them. Truly our visit to Australia and New Zealand has been the stuff that dreams are made on. But now it’s time to go home.