Tuesday 11th to Wednesday 12th September - Getting into a routine

The hottie made all the difference last night and I awoke feeling much more rested at a far more reasonable time of 7am.

Beautiful Kereru

The morning was as carbon copy of yesterday, though we are becoming fond of our morning trough circuit. The birds are very active at this time of day, so we took our time to enjoy watching them flitting around us. Our luck with Kokako has continued, having been privileged enough to spend some time listening to their haunting melodies and watching them every day so far. 

That's an even better photo of  saddleback - go me!

We made some more progress on clearing Hobbs Track but are being realistic about the fact that we will be lucky if we finish this one trail during the week, let alone the other two! However, we had been using muscles that we hadn’t discovered before. Two to three hours of sawing, cutting and dragging branches around were plenty for one day. Bring on lunch!

Door of the lighthouse - the whole thing was made in London in 1864 & shipped over

We’d saved tidying up the outside of the visitors’ centre for this afternoon. At last, a chance to get our hands on the petrol-powered leaf blower! We split the fun of blasting leaves out of the way fifty-fifty whilst also doing more de-cobwebbing and cleaning all the tables and chairs ready for tomorrow’s visitors.

Despite the weather predictions, the afternoon blossomed into a bright and sunny one.  A much calmer evening ahead, and with the potential of lots more people arriving on the island tomorrow, it seemed like a good chance to go for a moonlight stroll after dinner. I consumed another pasta treat, (I may need to try something different tomorrow!) before we layered up, covered our torches in red cellophane to reduce the disturbance to the wildlife and headed out into the night.  Thinking that 730pm would be a good time to go, Hilz and I were joined by a guy called Joe from the camera club. No problem. Apart from the fact that he seemed unable to whisper! What is it with some of the older generation that means they can’t talk quietly?! In a dramatic turnaround from last night, tonight was as calm as you can imagine. No wind at all made the island silent. The problem with this was our, now comparably very loud crunchy footprints on the gravel tracks! As hard as we tried to walk softly, the kiwi could probably hear us from the other side of the island! We heard a couple of ruru (morepork owls) and had a scout around for another wetapunga but all in vain.  Nearing 9pm we trudged, ever so loudly, back to the bunkhouse after an unsuccessful trip out! I have still got plenty of nights left to find my first wild kiwi….

I got some beautiful coastal sunrise shots

Wednesday 12^th September

Totally unplanned, I stirred again at 515am and it sounded like a calm morning. Apart from the camera club getting up for their last dawn chorus before leaving later today! Ah well, i you can’t beat ‘em… of course I ended up throwing some clothes on and joining four of them for my second dawn chorus.  And I’m glad I did. It was a very peaceful calm morning and after some brief conversation we all sat on the wattle track in unspoken silent unison as we enjoyed the sounds around us. I took some recordings on my phone to be able to enjoy it over again, there’s even some lovely kokako in there.  As I was already on the Wattle track, I topped up the troughs whilst I was passing to save Hilz and I the bother later that morning.

Feeling in need of a change, we decided to approach Hobbs track from the beach end this morning to see if we could meet in the middle with our work from the previous two days. Hmmmm, having started attacking some overgrown flax plants and making slow progress again uphill we agreed that working downhill was probably more sensible!  We heard the ferry arriving at the wharf and, sure enough, some more visitors were soon strolling by us, ruining the calm of ‘our island’! Along with the visitors came a new ranger, Vonny, the main ranger on the island who had enjoyed a few days off. Sue would be leaving us on the return crossing this afternoon.  We returned to base, not sure what our new leader would be asking of us for the rest of the week. But, according to Sue, she was quite happy with us to continue what we were already doing.

View of the sea from the lower end of Hobbs track

We felt we needed to do something different with our afternoon, so we opted to do some drain cleaning. This was thankfully more fun than it sounds because it took us along the scenic Kawerau track and down to the beach, so there was lots to listen to and see. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had planned ahead, taking our togs (that’s kiwi for swimming gear) to head into the sea for a very refreshing swim!  ‘Swim’ may be a little inaccurate. I think the term ‘dip’ is more appropriate as my entire body was only submerged for a millisecond!

Tired from our working day, we returned to the bunkhouse to find it very busy! There were various visitors just staying for one night but also a researcher Caitlin, originally from Boston, USA.  She is currently studying at Cambridge University in England who are supporting her in researching Hihi (stitchbird) on Tiritiri! She is here for 2 months and joined us in our room. Being a regular visitor, I asked her nonchalantly if she had a favourite bunk. Turned out I was in it, so of course I did the polite British thing and offered to swap! Well, it makes sense for her to be comfortable and I reckon part of the reason that I have been so cold is that I had windows on two sides of my bed for the last couple of nights. Maybe a change of scene will help me sleep better.

Nice clear night on the island

There must have been nearly a full house tonight. The kitchen was really crowded so I got in there and out again as quickly as possible. We had a ridiculously early night, my Fitbit says I was in bed soon after 8pm! Probably the reason that I was then awake from 11pm and unable to get back to sleep until after 1am.