North Island birds
Thought you might like to read a short report of a trip I did around the North Island in May 2005, as it may give you a feel for the sort of places you can go to. Bear in mind May isn't prime season either, and it was primarily a holiday with my wife and a three month old baby. NZ is certainly a place where it's easy to combine a birding and non birding holiday as there aren't enough birds to keep you busy all day in most places. August will be prime time for good seabirds. The South Island scenery is great - you should be able to persuade any non birder to go there!
We have just returned from a fortnight on the north island of New Zealand. From a birding perspective it was a good trip, seeing all 13 of the possible new birds. Weather wise it wasn't so great, with the last few days marred by rain. But as Tauranga had 309mm of rain in 24 hours at that time, and the township of Matata (near a good birding site) got pretty much eliminated by mudslides, our inconvenience was pretty minor.
After some time in Auckland we did a day trip to Tiritiri Matangi Island. Rushing off up the trails before the masses got there proved effective, with Red fronted Parakeet, Saddleback, Stitchbird and NZ Robin seen in no time, together with commoner species like Bellbird, Whitehead and Tui. It's hard to know what birds you can legitimately count on Tiritiri. I drew the line at Takahe - seeing flightless birds reintroduced to a small island is really like seeing them in a zoo. Ditto the Brown Teal. Saddlebacks on the other hand are clearly thriving and have been there for about fifteen years. Others like Kokako, which we saw several of later in the day, are a bit more borderline. In any case I saw all but Takahe, Saddleback and Stitchbird again on the mainland. Unfortunately light rain meant the photo opportunities weren't great.
Next we had a couple of days in northland. Driving into Paihia I stopped and had a look at some waders, and got the first of several NZ Dotterels of the trip, which had eluded me on previous visits to NZ. Later on we did the tourist boat trip out to the Hole in the Rock. There were lots of Buller's Shearwaters out there, together From there we went to Aroha Island north of Kerikeri (which is connected to the mainland by a causeway), and I went looking for kiwis that evening with the manager's son as a guide. During the course of a couple of hours walking around the island we heard about 4 or 5 kiwis feeding in the bushes, but only saw one. It appeared on the track in front of us, and after turning torches on it looked at us then ran away along the track. The views weren't fantastic, partly because they use weak lights with a red filter to minimise disturbance to the birds.
Next day produced more Brown Kiwis. I went out to an island with Department of Conservation people to change the radiotracking devices on a couple of birds. We recovered two adult males as well as an adult female that had just hatched a young bird. Next morning a visit to Helena Bay produced about 50 Brown Teal, a fair portion of the mainland population.
Next birding stop was Pureora Forest. The plan had been to spend an afternoon there, and then the following morning be at nearby Mapara Reserve at dawn, which is supposed to be the best place to see non-reintroduced Kokako at the moment. But I had a stroke of luck on the first afternoon when I found the one Kokako that still lives in the accessible part of Pureora sitting on top of a tree calling. I also had brief looks at a couple of Kaka. So next day I returned to Pureora, and had a brief look at a Yellow fronted Parakeet, plus a few other endemics such as NZ Robin and Tomtit.
From there we headed south to Ohakune. A late afternoon trip to Ruatiti eventually produced two Blue Ducks though it was getting dark by the time I found them. Next day some walks around Tongariro NP produced a male Rifleman. Whilst not a new bird for me it meant I had now seen representatives of all three endemic NZ bird families on the trip.
And from there we headed north via Taupo, ticking NZ Dabchick, to Rotorua where we picked up the final bird I was looking for, Black billed Gull. The weather started getting worse at this point. On our way back to Auckland we added Fernbird near Rotorua, and various waders including Wrybill at Miranda.
In the end I saw a total of 79 species, including 20 introduced species. I think the only endemics I could have seen but missed were Spotted Shag and NZ Falcon, both of which I had seen previously anyway.
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