Pouring rain this morning and fierce winds, so after breakfast we Skyped with friends in much drier Arizona before we bravely drove off to do a little birding in the estuaries around the Otago Peninsula and then drove out to Taiaroa Head at the tip. We passed fishermen’s cottages, weather beaten old boat houses, and colorful bus stops.
 |
| Bus stop |
 |
| Boat house |
There is a Northern Royal Albatross colony at Taiaroa with an albatross center/café/gift shop to protect the birds, conduct research, and allow the public to see them. When we arrived the wind was blowing a gale and rain was pelting down, but we got inside, checked out the gift shop, and then our noon tour began. A very knowledgeable docent gave us a lecture with a film and then offered us very large rain coats to put on which protected my backpack and camera. We followed her outside and up a steep hill to the point. Finally we stepped inside a hut with windows overlooking a windswept bluff and there we saw five Royals nesting in the grass! They weigh 9 kg and have a wingspan of 3 meters! They lay one egg every other year and take 12 months to raise their young, and then take a year off cruising around the Southern Hemisphere’s roaring 40s before returning to this point to mate again - typically with the same partner. There are 33 pairs nesting here, the only mainland nesting area anywhere. We also saw a large colony of Stewart Island Shag who build their neatly rounded nests out of guano and grass which looks very damp and uncomfortable particularly in the rain.
 |
| Battling the wind up to the Albatross viewing blind |
 |
| Northern Royal Albatross |
 |
| Stewart Island Shags on Guano/grass nests |
At their café, we had a lunch made up of chicken/cranberry/brie sandwiches, a large basket of fries and a cube of custard cake for dessert. We returned home to Skype family in South Dartmouth who are also in similar rainy though at a chillier temperature. We spent the latter part of the afternoon reading and watching the rain.
There is a neat old restaurant across the street called “1908 Café” which we wanted to try, but we have six lamb chops plus other stuff that we bought for dinner yesterday, so we got a late checkout from the assistant working the desk and plan to cook an early Christmas lunch tomorrow and use up our food.
Hil made a reservation at 1908. We walked over at 6:30 and had a very nice dinner of perfectly poached local salmon on a lentil cake for RRZ and me and bacon-wrapped chicken with pistachios and a beetroot puree for Hil. We got a note from our motel owner asking if we could pay tonight. He turned out to be a very charming, humorous Englishman and told us all about coming over here and running a motel for the last 2 years. He also said that they are full tomorrow - pretty amazing on Christmas day - and could we possible leave early (normal time) instead?…and he would buy all the food we wanted to sell - that sounded like a very sensible solution as we want to drive into Dunedin and see some of the sights before our 5PM flight to Auckland, so we hauled the chops, asparagus and pinot noir over and got $40 back!
 |
| Hil's Chicken |
9:30 and still light with rain and rainbows!
No comments:
Post a Comment