BIRDING NEW ZEALAND DAY 4: Stewart and Ulva Islands

I woke up at about 6 am, interested in scanning the lodge's grounds for birds. Tui were present everywhere I looked, sharing the shrubs with introduced blackbirds, house sparrows and dunnocks. High-pitched calls alerted me to the presence of a New Zealand fantail. The star of the morning were multiple kaka: 3 birds used to being fed by humans flew up to the terrace and put on quite a show! Unfortunately, feeding the birds isn't very good for them and is therefore frowned upon.

The New Zealand fantail was recently split from Australia's grey fantail

Kaka on Stewart Island are very slightly brighter in colour than South Island birds

After eating a delicious breakfast at the Stewart Island Lodge, we were picked up at 9 am by Furhana of Ruggedy Range Guided Walks (http://www.ruggedyrange.com) for an Ulva Island tour. We spent roughly 4 hours walking around the island, during which we saw a myriad of birds. South Island robins, red-crowned parakeet, weka, New Zealand bellbird, brown creeper and tomtit were common all over the island. Near the end of our walk, we stumbled across a large feeding flock of yellowhead, in which there were several South Island saddleback and a single rare yellow-crowned parakeet. We were lucky enough to see a roosting morepork as well. We even heard the calls of a southern tokoeka! We wouldn't have seen half of these birds without Furhana's help and I highly recommend her as a guide.

The morepork is another endemic recently split from its Australian cousin

Weka are very inquisitive birds: several strolled right up to us and inspected us

The tomtit is a close relative of Australia's robins

South Island robins on Stewart Island have darker upperparts

This red-crowned parakeet perched in a tree right next to the trail

Yellowhead have been introduced to Ulva Island due to their rarity

Young South Island saddlebacks are known as jackbirds

Though blurry, this is the best shot I could manage of the yellow-crowned parakeet

We then headed back to Stewart Island. We rested for most of the day, however when we head down to the hotel for dinner I managed to photograph a pair of paradise shelduck swimming in the waters of Halfmoon Bay.

The female paradise shelduck is far prettier than the male

We then took a Bravo Adventures kiwi-spotting tour (http://www.kiwispotting.co.nz) lead by Phillip Smith. These tours have had a 6 year success rate and we were not disappointed. On the ferry in, we saw some distant Stewart Island shags, a New Zealand fur seal and some little penguins. Once we'd arrived, we walked a trail towards a beach where we got great views of 2 southern tokoeka. We also heard several moreporks calling.

As flash is (for obvious reasons) not allowed, this was the best photo I got of the tokoeka