Stewart Island
Today we visited Stewart Island, or Rakiura, as the Maori call it after the amazing sunsets, and the Southern Lights (Aurora Australis). The island has 1,000 miles of coastline, if you measure all the inlets and bays, and 90% of the land area is National Park. It is a place of few people, where you can have a beach to yourself as we did this afternoon. The present population today is only a little above 400. In fact they are well outnumbered by the kiwi with estimated numbers of around 20,000.
The island offers some of New Zealand’s best birding both on land and sea and this morning’s excursion had us ashore on Ulva Island which is an open sanctuary managed by the Department of Conservation. Some of the birds seen included the endangered South Island saddleback, Stewart Island robin, rifleman, kaka (large bush parrot) bellbird, tui, karariki (parakeet). Again this afternoon was highlighted by another rare sighting of a New Zealand sea-lion (Hookers sea lion) on a beach by our hiking group. Overall a fantastic day of wildlife on this island of Rakiura.
