Stewart Island 5

The rain continued into Sunday morning so we donned full wet weather gear for the 15 minute ride by water taxi to the wildlife reserve of Ulva Island.

Waiting for the taxi

Our taxi driver, who would spend the day ferrying the occasional person and group to and from the island, was Ben, a friendly young New Zealander, who told us he'd been into boats 'Before I was born' and had grown up in Nelson, North Island. He'd like to work for the NZ Coastguard but had never stayed long enough in one place, he said, to do anything about it. We told him about our failed mission of the night before and he found some Little Blue Penguins, frolicking in the waves, for us.

We stayed on Ulva for more than 4 hours which was long enough to walk the paths through the luxuriant native forest from one end of the island to the other and back again. Long enough as well to have both sunshine and showers and to see 5 rainbows.

We'd been told to expect Ulva to be full of birds and their songs. In fact, perhaps because of the weather, the birds were hard to find and the song muted. After hearing the raucous calls of Kaka but only catching glimpses of them high up in the canopy, we suddenly came upon one sitting with its back to us, on a low branch next to the path. We crept towards it, fearing that it would take fright before we'd had a good look at it. When it didn't move we went closer, and then took up position so that we could get a view from the front. Still no movement from the Kaka. Eventually, I'm embarrassed to say, we resorted to coughing loudly and shuffling noisily in an attempt to get the Kaka to wake up - all without success.

Kaka having a kip