Auckland to Te Anau in one day is huge, are you sure?
I did Oxford to Milford Sound non-stop... Flight from London->Sydney->Queenstown then jumped straight in a hire car and drove to Milford Sound, ticking off Rock Wren on the way. I could just about claim this is the longest range twitch ever
. A picture of the "Homer Tunnel big boulder" is on my picasa pages at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115738510013418169108/NewZealand#5560617938313461714
Much of the info I could contribute has already appeared but here's my 2c.
I did a real whistle-stop tour of some key sites in the day before and the days after a conference, Nov 2010.
1. At Twizel I recommend popping in to the visitor centre where the Black Stilt breeding programme is run. They were very helpful to me in pointing to sites where there were known pure Black Stilts. There are lots of hybrids so you do need to be careful in identification and gather as much gen as you can about where to go.
2. Near the mouth of the braided river below Mt Cook is where I had my only adult Black Stilt. This is also supposed to be a good site for breeding Wrybill, but I didn't see any there, and I don't know if they are still present in Feb/March.
3. I did have Wrybill at the mouth of the Ashley River just north of Christchurch, a short diversion from the Christchurch-Kaikoura Rd, so this might be worth a quick stop if you are unlikely to get to Miranda. There is also a site near Auckland airport that I didn't visit but which was my backup plan for Wrybill if I had failed elsewhere: various trip reports mention the shore around Ambury Farm Park and the causeway to Puketutu Island.
4. I did the Ocean Beach kiwi trip, and though it wasn't cheap, the boat trip out as the sun was setting very scenic and the walk up and over to the beach quite exciting (we also saw Fairy Prions by spotlight on the boat trip back from the beach). If I'd had more time I think I'd prefer to walk to the south side of Stewart Island and try to find one (read Larry Wheatland's account of his trip for a rollercoaster account with a happy ending), but on balance I'd recommend it if you don't have a few days to spare.
5. Look at
http://www.birdingnz.net. One of the reasons birdforum does not have a lot of traffic about NZ birding is because most of it goes through the national forum. I am sure people there would have up-to-date info.
6. Tiri Tiri Matangi is definitely worth a trip and also something that can be enjoyed by non-birders, though they might not have the patience to wait for a skulking Kokako or Spotless Crake. Later the same afternoon I went up to Wenderholm Park and got NZ Dotterel on the beach. I originally booked to stay on the island to try for Little Spotted Kiwi, but it was my last day before flying home. So I cancelled rather than run the small risk being stranded if the ferry got cancelled because of the weather, which does happen from time to time.
That trip was done on my own with a lot of driving (and flying) to maximise visits to key sites. However I would love to go back and take the family (indeed we are seriously thinking about this for January 2013). Though my wife and daughters are distinctly non-birding, NZ is a place I would happily take them and try to combine holiday with birding because the scenery is stunning and in places like Tiri Tiri or Ulva, the wildlife quite tame and accessible. I would even take them out on one of the Kaikoura pelagics and expect them to enjoy it because of the numbers of birds, the setting, and because (as others have said) it's short and sweet. I actually did two trips on one day and even considered doing a dolphin swim in between (I didn't in the end -- I stayed in at the cafe and enjoyed a fantastic eggs benedict for breakfast and used their wifi).
Cheers, Ian
