New Zealand: Mount Bruce

I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.

Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV Sc V

It is difficult to get back to writing about nature so soon after my father's passing, but I have decided to do so as, if nothng else, a form of personal therapy. Life, even in retrospect, has to go on.

So, with some difficulty, let me take you back to happier times, in December 2011, when Eileen, Ryan and I were making our rain-soaked circuit of New Zealand's North Island.

After the Society for Conservation Biology conference in Auckland, Eileen, Ryan and I set off for a tour around the North Island, visiting friends in Hamilton, taking in the Te Papa Museum in Wellington after a rail journey across the volcanic centre of the island, and losing our one chance for a real nature excursion when the ferry to the Kapiti Island reserve was cancelled because of the weather.  Instead, I gave myself a consolation prize on the way to our next stop, Napier: a visit to the Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre, a place I first toured in 1974.

Back then, Mount Bruce was a government captive-breeding facility for New Zealand's endangered birds, particularly the South Island Takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri).  Thanks to Brian Bell of the Wildlife Department I had a private tour, my only chance to see a number of extreme rarities in the flesh.  Today it is part of a larger nature reserve, and is open to the public.  We could see the star attraction from the visitors' centre balcony...

A Takahē, methodically working its way through the vegetation beneath us.  The Takahē, though certainly a gorgeous and exotic, if somewhat ponderous, creature, is far from the most unusual of New Zealand's endemics - it is, basically, a Clydesdale version of the widespread Pukeko or Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio).  The remarkable thing about it is its history. 

Until 1948, the Takahē was believed to have gone the way of New Zealand's other giant flightless birds (including its North Island cousin Porphyrio mantelli).  In that year, an ornithologist named Geoffrey Orbell discovered a tiny populaton of living Takahēs high in a glacial valley above Te Anau, in the southwestern part of the South Island.  His discovery, once announced in the press, was treated with the astonishment and enthusiasm that might have greeted the announcement of a herd of live Triceratops.

Since then, the Takahē has been the subject of an intense recovery program.  There are now populations on a number of offshore islets, and though its numbers are barely above the couple of hundred that Orbell found in 1948 there seems a reasonable chance that it will survive.

I had performed the singular feat, earlier in the year, of missing the extremely tame Takahēs at Tiritiri Matangi Island, so I was glad to see this bird (even if it is a semi-captive) here.  It is an iconic creature - one of the few flightless rails to have survived the human onslaught on the Pacific Islands.

Here's a bit of video.

As we strolled through the grounds of the centre, Ryan and I came across a small clearing where a staff member was setting out food for a group of eager New Zealand Kākās (Nestor meridionalis).  Watching them crowd around the feeders, I assumed that they, like the Takahēs, were semi-captive or, at least, free-flying captive-bred birds.

Except for a few individuals, though, these were almost all perfectly wild birds, taking advantage of a handout.  They are descendants of birds introduced into the area in 1996 and 1997, fifty years after the last native Kākās has disappeared from Mount Bruce.

For wild parrots, they were certainly tame - not to mention loaded with obvious personality.

Ryan liked them too, though we both could have done without the rain....

This bit of video shows some pretty insistent begging behavior, from what I presume is a fledged young.

The rain finally got to be a bit too much for Ryan, so we retreated indoors to see the kiwis (no photography allowed), including a white bird hatched earlier in the year, and what may be the most distinctive and unique animal in New Zealand, the Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), last survivor of an entire Order of reptiles, the Rhynchocephalia, that otherwise disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous.  No, that isn't a big lizard.

Ryan went back to the car to join Eileen, but I wanted to see a few more birds - caged, I admit, but I couldn't resist.  This North Island Kōkako (Callaeas cinereus) apparently felt the same way about me.  He (I presume) was, it seems, intensely imprinted on humans.  He serenaded me repeatedly, and did everything he could to throw himself through the mesh into my arms.

The trouble was that he was extremely active, and almost impossible to frame in my viewfinder.  I could only get useful video once he stopped to preen.

This fine caged male Stichbird (Notiomystis cincta) was much more sedate, and much less interested in me.  Of course I saw both these species in the wild (more or less) on Tiritiri Matangi on our visit in March 2011, but by seeing them at Mount Bruce I had a chance to spend time with members of four of the five endemic bird families of New Zealand: kiwis (Apterygidae), nestorid parrots (Nestoridae), Stitchbirds (Notiomystidae) and Wattlebirds (Callaeatidae).  I encountered the other family, the New Zealand Wrens (Xenicidae), in 1974 - but, on both my visits in 2011, they stayed out of sight.  A reason to go back...

In Memoriam Charles Orenstein

I have tried not to make this a personal blog; but I have to interrupt the tales of my travels to say a word about the man who, in many ways, made them possible.

My father, Charles Orenstein, passed away on Thursday, October 18, 2012, two weeks short of his 96th birthday.  Dad worked himself up from poverty, and dedicated his life - up until the very end, he was still going to work at his office - to ensuring that his family never wanted for anything.  Without that dedication I would never have been able to devote my life to wildlife conservation, or to travel the world to see so much of its wildlife for myself.  I would never have met my dear wife Eileen, because I would never have been at the 2006 Convention on Biological Diversity Meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, where she represented the Government of Malaysia.  I would never have done - well, many things.

Dad was a wonderful and remarkable man, literally loved by everyone he came across.  He and my mother had the ideal marriage - intense, close, and without an argument or harsh word for almost 67 years.  

I wrote this for his obituary notice in the Toronto papers; perhaps it will convey some of what Dad was, and of how much I love and miss him:

ORENSTEIN, Charles (“Chuck”) – passed away on October 18, 2012 at Toronto General Hospital, two weeks short of his 96th birthday.  An insupportable loss to his deeply beloved wife of 67 years, Mary; to his children Ronald and Eve; to his daughter-in-law Eileen and son-in-law Clyde; to his grandchildren Mark, Reesa, Randall, Jennifer, Adrienne, Fiona, Bryan and Davin; to his great-grandchildren Leila, Ryan and Royce; to his surviving brothers Samuel, Benson and Bernard; and to the many relatives and friends he helped and encouraged through his long, successful and exemplary life.  There never was a finer man, a kinder and more loving husband, or a better or more supportive father.  After leaving school early to support his beloved mother and serving as a navigator in the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII, he went on to a long and distinguished business career.  With his brothers, he founded Seaway Hotels, Consolidated Hotel Management and the Orenstein Capital Group.  He became the first Jewish President of the Kingston Chamber of Commerce.  In 1945 he met his future wife Mary Monnes, and proposed to her the next day.  After a brief courtship, he and Mary went on to one of the longest, happiest and most serene of marriages.  Throughout his life, his brilliance and his intense capacity for hard work were directed at only one aim: providing the best life possible for his wife, his children and his grandchildren.  He pursued that goal, successfully, up to the last few days of his life, working at his office long after most men would have gone on to a well-earned retirement.  He touched the lives of many, and he led a life of dedication, strength and love.  His family, and the many people that loved him for his sparkle, his goodness, his humour, his open-hearted friendship, and his generosity, will never forget him.  May we live by his example.

New Zealand: Waitakere and Muriwai

After indulging myself on the Hauraki Gulf seabird-watching expedition, I felt it was only fair to share a bit of New Zealand nature with Ryan and Eileen.  Besides, it was the day before the Society for Conservation Biology meeting - December 4, 2011 - and I knew that I was about to disappear into the bowels of the conference centre for the next five days.  Accordingly, I had booked the three of us on an SCB field excursion to the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, about 45 km north of Auckland.

I had, unfortunately, reckoned without the weather.  It turns out that I had been exceedingly lucky to have had good weather on the previous day, because on the 4th it rained continuously (a harbinger, if I had only known, of what we were in for as we drove around the North Island the following week).

The park is a most attractive place full pf native vegetation, though the weather was not conducive to photography of sweeping landscapes!

The Waitakere Ranges Regional Park is the site of a unique conservation experiment: Ark in the Park.  For many years, New Zealand conservationists have attempted to conserve rare species susceptible to introduced predators to predator-free offshore islands; many such species now survive only on such islands.  Ark in the Park is one of several recent attempts to create a "mainland island" - a predator-free area on the mainland that can be used to expand the range of native birds and other animals.  It has been a moderate success, though the bird on the sign - a Stitchbird (Notiomystis cincta) - is one of the birds that failed there, probably because some nest predators did get through.  There are no current plans to return Stitchbirds to the area.

Visitors to Ark in the Park must be careful not to bring in weed seeds or other undesirable organisms.  Ryan is following the rules by disinfecting his shoes before starting on the trail.

The reserve holds one of the remaining stands of what was once the dominant tree of North Island forests, the Kauri (Agathis australis).  One of the main reasons for the disinfectant treatment is to prevent the spread of kauri dieback, a disease that threatens to kill off the last of the great trees.

Here, growing on a sapling, is a spray of kauri foliage.

Hanging clusters of narrow-leaved, cream-and-yellow flowered orchids decorated our pathway.  This is apparently a member of the genus Earina, but I am not sure precisely which one.  It resembles the Raupeka (Earina autumnalis), but that is an austral autumn bloomer and unlikely to have been flowering in December.  Of the other two New Zealand species, it looks more to me like the Peka-a-waka (Earina mucronata), though from photographs that appears to have yellower flowers.

There weren't many birds about in the rain, but I might have expected that if one were to show up it would be one of the absurdly tame North Island Robins (Petroica longipes), especially with our guide's mealworms on offer.  Like the birds I saw on Tiritiri Matangi (a genuine island) earlier in the year, this one was color-banded for individual recognition.

From Waitakere our group shifted down to the coast at Muriwai, home (between August and March) to 1200 nesting pairs of Australasian Gannets (Morus serrator) and one of only three gannet colonies on the mainland of New Zealand.  It was still raining (and windy, and cold...) but Ryan remained an excellent sport about it all as we made our way down to the colony.  So did Eileen, who followed us, gamely snapping photographs.

The birds have selected quite a spectacular piece of real estate for their nesting ground.

A viewing platform allowed us to watch the birds on the main stack...

...and to photograph a number of pairs at closer range below us (under, it must be said, rather trying conditions, but it was exciting all the same).  

Unfortunately, the railing was at exactly the wrong height for Ryan...

...but, with a bit of ducking and weaving, we all had good views of the birds.

A few birds tended to growing, and particularly fluffy, young (they acquire their fluff within a week of hatching, but these young seem older than that).

After watching the gannets, Ryan and I walked out to have a look at the black sand beach at the edge of the sea, a popular jumping-off point for local surfers (Eileen followed at a distance, camera in hand).

And it was still raining.

New Zealand: Storm Petrels

For my last posting on our pelagic trip in Hauraki Gulf on December 3, 2011, I am concentrating on the two smallest birds of the trip.  Although further south, at Kaikoura in the South Island, the big attraction for seabirders are the largest of the pelagic species, the albatrosses, on Hauraki Gulf the number one draw is a tiny bird that, not so many years ago, was thought to have been extinct for almost a century.

Storm-Petrels - the birds who gave us the name "petrel" from their St. Peter-like ability to, apparently, walk on water - are at the same time the most delightful and the most frustrating of seabirds.  That they are delightful I will, I hope, make obvious from my photographs.  The frustration comes from the fact that many species are notoriously difficult to identify.  Fortunately, that was not a problem on our trip.  The two species on offer were very different from each other, removing the frustration and leaving only the delight.

The White-faced Storm-Petrel (Pelagodroma marina) is a widespread species that I have encountered in places as distant from each other as Australia and Peru.  It is one of the few storm-petrels that can be described as unmistakeable; no other member of the family has a similar pattern.

At the individual level, though, things are more difficult.  Notice the differences in the amount of white on the face, and the extent of the grey breast-band, of the birds in these photographs, in the photos above...

...and on this bird.  Are these age or sex differences (though there aren't supposed to be any, except for lover wings and tails on females), individual variations, or are these birds from separate breeding populations (there are at least five subspecies worldwide)? I confess I don't know.

The White-faced Storm Petrel, like some of the other members of its family, has yellow webbing between its toes - the brightest colour on the bird.  Does this somehow help them to attract small sea creatures when they "patter" on the surface?

The pattering behaviour of storm-petrels is not just a matter of feeding technique.  According to a 1979 study by Philip Withers, the drag on their feet provided by the water's surface helps keep them aerodynamically stable as they hover over the water.  Withers compares this to the stabilizing effect of a kite string.

The White-faced Storm Petrel has its own peculiar set of feeding movements, bouncing repeatedly from the surface of the water.  

The result has been likened to a man on a pogo stick, but I think it looks rather balletic.

Anyway, the object of this action is to catch tiny crustaceans, fishes and other floating plankton.  They seemed to like our chum, too.

Our other storm-petrel was perhaps the ultimate Hauraki Gulf specialty - and for a long time, no one even knew it was there.  Until then, without a close look, a bird like this one might have been dismissed as Wilson's Storm-Petrel (Oceanites oceanicus), a globally-distributed species that may be the most numerous wild bird in the world.  The blackish plumage and white rump-band are a feature of many storm-petrels.

A striped belly, however, is something unique - and so is the bird that bears it.

Before 2003, the New Zealand Storm-Petrel (Oceanites maorianus) was known only from three specimens collected during the nineteenth century.  In that year, birders began seeing strange storm-petrels, with boldly-striped underparts unlike those of any other species, on the waters of the gulf.  Slowly, the evidence began to grow that these birds were the same as the long-lost birds described over a century earlier.  The New Zealand Storm-Petrel was back.

The rediscovered population must be extremely small.  Birdlife International's fact sheet on the New Zealand Storm-Petrel suggests that there may be no more than fifty of them.  Though they probably breed on islands somewhere in Hauraki Gulf, no one knows exactly which island, or islands, they use.

Nonetheless, the birds are now a frequent sight on pelagic trips in the Gulf during the austral summer.  We saw three individuals at least, and they were, of course, the birds of the trip.

Like the White-faced Storm-Petrel, the New Zealand Storm-Petrel is a balletic patterer over the ocean surface.

It is nice to be able to end the account of my Hauraki Gulf pelagic with a gallery of photos of one of the rarest and least-known birds in the world - and yet one that is becoming relatively easy to see, not far from the largest city in New Zealand.

It was a privilege, and a thrill, to be able to see it.