Happy St. Patty's

3/17/2012 - Queenstown & Auckland, NZ

Today was the last day in Queenstown. Colby and I spent the morning at the bird sanctuary. For a family run organization all of whose advertising is word of mouth, it's a vital part of New Zealand's wildlife conservation efforts.

First we saw a bird show, where a parakeet (which is different from a budgie, which is what we call parakeets; these are gold or red crested green birds who are much bigger than our parakeets, but smaller than parrots) continuously flew from a handler behind us to the presenter. It was trained to swoop as close to our heads as possible, so the handler in the rear moved from the left to the right to make sure that everyone felt the whoosh as it passed next to our heads.

Incoming! A behemoth pigeon flew to the presenter. Its head is the same size as US pigeons, but its body is the size of a bowling ball, with purple and teal feathers. They communicate through flight, and when this one flew back and forth between the presenter and the rear handler, the "swoosh swoosh swoosh" was truly quite loud.

The third creature the presenter brought out to show us was a lizard that is literally one of 4 types of reptiles in the world, in a genus all its own. It's been around since before dinosaurs, lives for 200 years and has three eyes! Due to torpor, he told us, the lizard could live in our refrigerator drawer for 6 months and be perfectly comfortable. The one he showed us was a baby, so he could hold it, but they grow to be quite large.

Did you know that New Zealand, despite having more sheep than people, has no native land mammals besides bats? Did you know that possums here are terrible pests? The British brought them to the islands to control the rabbit populations they had previously introduced. Now they've proliferated so much that they are destructive, bringing down the indigenous kiwi population by the thousands. Even worse, the British also brought stoats, which are weasel/ferret type things. A single stoat eats 40 kiwi eggs a day. Kiwis used to number in the tens of millions before stoats and possums, and now there are only about 70,000. Now you can see why this conservatory is so important; do to the efforts of this conservatory and a few others, the number of kiwis is growing by 2% a year.

Colby and I walked through the forest trails they had set up, and saw all sorts of gorgeous and interesting creatures; morepork owls, a falcon, brown and blue ducks, giant trout (before we discovered that they were trout, I actually thought they were whales – they were that big), and two Kea.

Kea are terrifyingly enormous parrots, whose cage was so big that we had to actually go in it to see them. Around us there were chewed up hiking boots, a Mickey doll in a cage with stuffing coming out its head, a toy tugboat that had big bite marks in it, and other toys similarly destroyed. They squawked to each other out of nowhere and it was so loud both of us jumped.

But most important we got to see… KIWIS!!!!!!! They were in an enclosure so we could only watch them, no interaction or anything, but these birds are seriously cute. Their legs aren't skinny like other birds'; they're as thick as taper candles, and their toes are as thick as my pinkies. That's pretty big for a small bird. From the back, it looked exactly like the rear half of a corgi, because their feathers look like hair. They also rest on their beaks, which are about 7 inches long, for a tripod effect.

After the conservatory, I ate at a famous place called Fergburger. I had a tempura tofu burger which was as big as my face, but so delicious I ate the whole thing up.

Then we were off to the airport again, this time to Auckland. What an amazing city! Auckland is 1.5 million people, the fourth largest city in the world in terms of land mass, and its refreshingly diverse. It was mild for the first time on the trip, so we walked the mile to the coast, passing all sorts of people who were out for St. Patty's day. The city is gorgeous, and we ate on the water, with a delicious to-go ice cream treat for the walk home.