November 9-27, 2024 with Dan Lane & local guide
A trip to Aotearoa (Land of the Long White Cloud, or New Zealand) should make clear just how isolated this land mass is. As you may know by now, the long isolation of these islands resulted in one of the most amazing faunas anywhere in the world, with birds filling nearly all terrestrial vertebrate niches! From grazing moas (instead of ungulates) and giant eagles (instead of big cats and other predators) down to the Tui, Bellbird, and Stitchbird (instead of hummingbirds), flightless rails (instead of small land mammals) and Kiwis (instead of… well… not sure, really), and densities of nesting seabirds that would have been incalculable. It must have been a sight to behold! If only we could have run tours about a thousand years ago! In the past thousand years, New Zealand has lost at least 30% of its avifauna outright, and much of the rest of the land birds are fighting for their existence only with dedicated help from people maintaining predator-free islands and reserves where they can exist relatively safely! Our tour felt a little like a connect-the-dots drawing as we drove from one of these reserves to the next to see these species! Today, much of the main islands has been converted to a nearly European landscape, complete with the birds, and various introduced land mammals have taken their toll on the native species that had no experience with them until the past few hundred years. Yet there remain some impressive podocarp and southern beech forests, heathlands and tussockgrass patches, and one can still see some idea of how this land must have been before humans came along.
So in November, we came along... We started in the deep South, getting off the plane in Queenstown where a Cape Barren Goose was on the docket, and after a bit of a snafu, we ended up making a brief trip to Stewart Island, including a near-shore pelagic and a night outing to see South Island Brown Kiwi. Then, we paid a visit to the scenic Fiordland National Park, spotting the endemic Yellowhead, South Island (NZ Rock) Wren, and a surprise vagrant Black-tailed Nativehen from Australia! From here, we headed to Dunedin to do a boat trip in the Otago Harbor, seeing the Northern Royal Albatross colony there and a taste of several seabirds offshore. Next, up to the Mackenzie basin to see a few rare shorebirds such as Black Stilt and Wrybill. Thanks to landslides on the wet Westland side of South Island, we had to change plans on the fly and visited Hokatika and Punakaiki for the Pancake Rocks and a night outing to see Westland Petrels at their nesting colony. Crossing back over Arthur’s Pass and a brief stop at Ashley River mouth, we motored up to Kaikoura where a storm kept us onshore for a day, but we managed to get out the following morning for a nice pelagic with five albatrosses, four shearwaters, and several petrels. We then had to head up to Picton, with a brief stop at Lake Elterwater for Hoary-headed Grebe, and do another boat trip on the Queen Charlotte Sound and Blumine Island for a few more South Island specialties such as the Malherb’s (Orange-fronted) Kakariki, Little Penguin, NZ King Shag, and Fluttering Shearwater. The next morning, we took the ferry to the North Island, stopped at a water treatment plant (what good birding trip doesn’t?) for Black-fronted Dotterel, on to see the only colony of Nankeen Night-Herons in the country, and then finally to the volcanic slopes of Tongariro National Park. The volcanic theme continued the next day, after a successful visit to Pureora Forest and Lake Taupo, when we pulled in to stinky Rotorua. From there, we headed north to the shorebird reserve at Miranda, where an impressive collection of Bar-tailed Godwits, South Island Oystercatchers, and some other shorebirds were collecting at high tide. On past Auckland, and a stop to see the critically endangered endemic subspecies of Australia Fairy Tern, then checked in to our hotel in Whangaparaoa. From here we did a day trip to Tiritiri Matangi Island, enjoying the “grand finale” of North Island specialties there including Takahe, North Island Saddleback, Stitchbird, Brown Teal, Whiteheads, and even a few lucky folks got onto a Tuatara! The final night, we joined Ness to see a North Island Brown Kiwi at Tawharanui Reserve, and so ended our tour.
Thanks for weathering this tour, and despite any mishaps, we actually accumulated an impressive bird list! I hope those will be the memories that stick with you most!
Mammals seen (alive):
Old World Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)
European Brown Hare (Lepus europaeus)
Short-beaked Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis)
Dusky Dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obscurus)
Hector's Dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori)
Hooker's Sea Lion (Phocarctos hookeri)
New Zealand Fur Seal (Arctocephalus forsteri)
Domestic Goat (Capra aegagrus)
Herps seen:
Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus)
Good birding!
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/296445
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/nez24TRIPLIST.pdf
Dan (the Barbet)