GOTCHA!!!!

Well after the rains finally ceased we got some really beautiful camping in on the northern most part of New Zealand at Cape Reinga and 90 Mile Beach before heading down the west coast for a truly EXTREME New Zealand experience. We camped at a small national park called the Trounson Kauri Park, which apparently due to the fact that it is entirely surrounded by pasture land has helped to keep pests out and increase the population of north island brown kiwi. So we set up our tents, cooked a hearty meal, covered our headlamps with red foil to dull our lights, and headed out into the bush an hour after sunset to see if we could find a wild kiwi.

We knew there must be some in the forest because we could hear a couple calling to each other as we were cooking, and sure enough after only 13 minutes of wandering the trails we found our superstar..


Amazingly this little guy wasn't even afraid of us, and walked right through our path about 5 feet away. At that point we figured it was easy peasy to track them down, but after another 2 hours in the bush the only other sighting we had was a beak poking out from around a tree. It's a shame that the picture doesn't show his beak actually, because it is definitely the most impressive part of the kiwi. It really is quite a miracle that any of these birds survive at all, considering that they seem pretty oblivious of anything that could kill them, and apparently they don't really rear their young at all, just turn them loose shortly after birth. But hey.. it leads to good times and after a really fun kiwi hunt we're not complaining.