The alarm went off at six so we could get up early, run into town for breakfast at the Sand Fly, pick up some sandwiches, and set off back up the road towards Milford Sound. Bob has a printout of likely place to spot the four birds he needs in this area. They are all rare and difficult to see, so we didn’t know what would happen.
It was cold outside, fresh snow on the mountain tops and frost on the windshield - little sympathy from US east coasters, I know, but still it was Cold! We’re at 45 degrees south - half way to Antarctica, and it feels closer! We stopped at one of the enormous meadows for detailed study of the Black-fronted Terns glimpsed yesterday then stopped at Knob Flat to look for the Kaka parrot and the Yellowhead, but only saw Bellbirds and Tui.
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| Lupine |
It was brilliantly clear with bright colors of the green mountains, white snow and glaciers, blue sky and water and the introduced, but very pretty, pink and purple lupine. This was quite a contrast to the dull colors of rainy yesterday, but we also noticed that the vertical walls of the canyons weren’t covered by the waterfalls of every shape and size as they were yesterday, but looked rather dry! So I guess we’ve seen this area in all of its beautiful aspects.
Bob directed us to stop at the Lake Gunn Nature Trail, an area of primary forest, full of huge, tall red beech trees and ancient fallen trunks, and everything covered with a layer of green mosses and ferns. It was as if everything had a layer of green snow on it, smoothing everything out. We saw several of the rapidly-moving Rifleman birds that we had seen earlier - tiny, almost tailless greenish birds.
We drove up to the tunnel entrance at 3000’ and pulled off. There was another nature trail there, but it had a sign saying it was closed and dangerous. As this is the spot to see the very rare NZ Rock Wren and it is supposed to be near the trail head, we headed in, sat on some rocks and ate our lunch. Our instructions told us to just sit quietly and wait for the bird to appear! Bob saw it whip by and then some other birders waved us over as they had located its nesting area, so we got extensive good views of this small bird with flashy white eyebrows. Its bill was full of food and it looked very nervous so we didn’t linger too long so it could feed its endangered young. A young Dept of Conservation worker came up hopping from rock to rock in front of us. She was there to document Rock Wren’s presence and asked us what the colors of its leg bands were but was otherwise uncommunicative. Nice to know that NZ is taking very seriously the effort to rescue its many endangered birds.
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| Lunch at the Pass |
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| Celmisia sp. |
We turned around at this point, stopping at Monkey Creek to look for the Blue Duck, but only saw Paradise Shelduck. Hil pulled off at Mirror Lake, a small side pond cut off from the river and we saw very young NZ Scaup ducklings diving and scooting around on the water with no parental guidance.
We returned home at four and Hil and I set off downtown with sacks of laundry. We found a very efficient laundromat and shopped and wandered around the very nice town of Te Anau with its good restaurants, bookstores and groceries. We had beer and coffee at a cafe while waiting for the dryer to finish.
We later returned to town for dinner at Dolce Vita for various pasta dishes.
It is now past ten and just getting dark on this longest day of the year!
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| Our nice cabin |
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