The Wandering Tattler

This morning we walked down to the waterfront and boarded a ferry for Tiri Tiri Matangi Island. Tiri is an “open” nature reserve, whereas Kapiti was “closed” (Kapiti required special advance permission, granted only to a few people, and was closed to private boat landings). Tiri, like Kapiti, is now predator-free due to intense trapping and poisoning campaigns that have eliminated introduced mammals. Though cleared by Europeans in the nineteenth century for farming, it has been largely reforested in the last few decades, and in the absence of rats, stoats, cats, and dogs, native birds are thriving and the forest rang with their calls and songs. Tiri is a low island, so we were able to combine birding and hiking with little difficulty. On the trail to the visitor center at the center of the island we were led by an Englishwoman along the beach and then up a meandering forest track. Near the bottom of the trail we spotted two dead blue-eyed penguins. Our guide indicated that they had probably starved due to a failure of parental feeding. Otherwise, however, we enjoyed an abundance of native birds, including some endemic species that are rare or absent from the mainland. These island species are typically ground-loving creatures that have little fear of humans, so they would not fly away as we approached. We saw bellbirds, Tomtits, stitchbirds, saddlebacks, tuis, kakarikis (red-crowned parakeets), whiteheads, fantails, north island robins, purple moorhens, and – rarest of all – takahes and kokakos. Takahes are very large, flightless rails; they were nearly extinguished by introduced mammals but today about 60 individual survive. Kokakos are the largest honeyeaters, hence largest songbirds, in New Zealand. Though capable of weak flight, they move about primarily by running and jumping. Thanks to captive breeding, about 200 breeding pairs now survive, a few of which live in the wild on Tiri Tiri Matangi. We also saw a pair of Brown Teal, a critically endangered species with fewer than one thousand surviving individuals. To learn more about this endemic duck (and to hear a good example of the Kiwi accent), go to http://www.brownteal.com/.

This evening we were treated to dinner in a fine harborside restaurant by Fran Silvestri and his wife Susie. Fran, who was formerly the executive director of our local Monadnock Community Mental Health Center, is now the director of the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership; Susie is a psychiatrist and mental health administrator. They spend most of the year in Auckland, but Fran visits the States and Europe each year on business and they maintain a residence in nearby Swanzey, NH. Our daughters met at the home of a babysitter in Keene 24 years ago and have been friends ever since. Erica and Lisetta toured New Zealand in 1999 and walked many of the main scenic hiking tracks through the South Island. It was great to see Fran and Susie and to bring our New Zealand journey to a close with such a satisfying dinner visit.