gary wright wrote:
Dave
If yoiu get Robertson and Heather "hand guide to the birds of NZ" it gives
yoiu a guide on good places to see birds in NZ as well as being a field guide. Their are
boat taxis going over to Ulva Is all of the time-from memory $20 pp and it is self guided
from there. The night tour for brown kiwi is in the above book but is Bravo adventure
cruises 03 -2191144 is a four hour boat trip jsut about gauranteed to see brown kiwi,
feeding on beach. I assume it is wear David Attenborough got his footage from. Again
it is relatively inexpensive(say $60 pp)-we saw Bullers Albatross on teh way out but as
it is getting dark it makes it a bit tricky. They can be chartered for seabird
excursions.
In terms of seeing the birds you probably only need to overnight-they are all
relatively easy to see(as mentioned previously about NZ birds!) There are
however a lot of walking tracks on Stewart Is - just look up the conservation
commission website(I can't remember the correct title for their national park
mob)..
The only problem with Stewart Island is the unreliability of the
weather. The weekend I visited (November) it began to rain as soon as I
got off the hovercraft, and came down in sheets on and off throughout
the day. I took the cruise out to Ulva but we had to turn back as the
wind got too strong and then that evening's Brown Kiwi trip was
cancelled, which had been fully booked with one night trippers. It was
held the following night and I was able to get on that, which was less
crowded (9 people instead of 16) and we had fantastic views of up to 9
kiwis, including one that walked up to us while we had to stand like
statues until it decided we were of no interest and it returned to the
very wet woods.
You may be lucky but it's always wise to have a bit of flexibility in
your travel arrangements in a place like Stewart Island, or should I say
New Zealand overall?
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