Stewart Island: The Island of the Birds

Throughout my wanderings, multiple travelers have told me that Stewart Island was one of their favorite places in New Zealand. Stewart Island is at the bottom of the South Island; it’s southern latitude is about the same as Duluth, Minnesota’s northern latitude. I’d loosely been planning on visiting the island (because I’d been to the farthest northern point, may as well try to get to the southern point!) before I heard these rave reviews. So, as I kept hearing about how awesome Stewart Island was, I knew I really had to make the effort.

Stewart Island has a small town on it called Oban with about 400 residents and the ferry to get there takes 1 hour from the town of Bluff. It’s a small passenger ferry only, and it’s not cheap: $110 nzd each way. Plus, parking in Bluff is $16/night. So, it’s only because of those rave reviews that I actually coughed up the money and went to Stewart Island.

But, even as I crossed the bumpy Foveaux Strait, I was wondering that the heck there was to do on Stewart Island. Somehow, despite all the praise I’d heard for the place, no one had ever really said what they DID there. Of course, there was a whole list online of cool things to do, but everything cost money! Kiwi spotting tours: $200+. Jade carving: $180. Flights to explore the National Park (Stewart Island is 90% national park): $400+. Charter boats for bird watching, shark spotting, penguin finding, and coastal exploring: way too much!

There are a few hiking tracks, but as I couldn’t bring my car, the cab service on the island charged $30 one-way to get to the trailhead. The things to do on Stewart Island for free were seriously lacking. So as the ferry pulled into the harbor, I was racking my brain to figure out how to entertain myself. Fortunately, I always have a good book I can read. And, frustratingly, I am literally always behind on my blog posts, so I knew I could work on that. But it seemed such a waste to pay all that money to come to an island just to stay in the hostel or at a cafe.

I got to the island, got to the hostel, and sat down with a cup of hot water and my laptop to plan the next few days.

And, realized, that amidst all this fretting, I forgot that the main draw to Stewart Island is…

Kiwi.

Not the fruit. Not the New Zealanders. The bird.

Stewart Island’s claim to fame is that it is the best place in New Zealand to spot a kiwi in the wild. Various kiwi spotting tours run after dark and they cite a 99% success rate on seeing a kiwi. Of course, most of the people at the hostel weren’t willing to pay the $200+ per person price tag, and the possibility of spotting a kiwi on your own is fairly decent (as the kiwi spotting record book showed). In fact, kiwi outnumber people on Stewart Island at a ratio of 50 to 1.

Of course, all the people live/stay in Oban and the kiwis are spread out across the 1,748 square kilometer island…and no one has a car.

Kiwi are also nocturnal, so you need a flashlight to see them. But white light will startle them.

Alas, having stupidly forgotten the main reason why people go to Stewart Island, I didn’t even have my headlamp, much less a red light. Still, after dinner, I decided to go walk through the forest. Stewart Island has plenty of other birds, including kākā, which I’d only seen at the Te Anau Bird Sanctuary. I wanted to see one in the wild. Additionally, the forest canopy makes dusk fall earlier in the bush, I thought maybe I’d get lucky and be able to see a kiwi before it got truly dark.

Mere steps from the hostel, I entered the bush–a little trail through the woods that led to a park. Thirty steps in and I spotted my first bird: a New Zealand wood pigeon. Twenty more steps and I finally got to see the kākā shrieking above my head.

It was 500 meters of winding bush to reach the park, but it took me 20 minutes to walk it, awed by the untouched forest, the birds, the air full of bird song.

I crossed the wide, grassy park, then took another trail on the other side, descending into little valleys and climbing tiny hills, meandering through the forest. I walked slow, making no noise with my footfalls, and just enjoyed the cool evening. Shadows fell, the air was dim and heavy.

That trail spit me out at a small bay and I was shocked by the sudden brightness as the sky opened. The sun had officially set (at 9:25pm) and it was 9:28. I turned around and went back the way I came. Only 50 steps later, retracing my path of minutes before, I heard a sound. The branches had folded in again. It was dim, but not so dark that I couldn’t see around me. I froze, listened. There it was again.

I turned my head. About twelve feet away on my left was a kiwi. It was nudging it’s beak through the layer of decomposing leaves and soil on the forest floor.

All I could think is that I was the luckiest person. Completely unprepared…goes for a walk on the off chance I’l happen to spot a kiwi before it gets full dark…then actually finds a kiwi before it’s full dark…AND (on top of all that) it was still light enough to get photo proof.

I know a photo is worth a thousand words, but let me add just a few words.

It was nothing like that. For one, it was more than a foot tall. It’s beak was twice as long as I’d expected. And it was so round. It’s body was not chicken-like at all. Not pheasant-like. Not duck-like. It’s body was a ball of fluff, not feathers. And it’s head was a second little ball with a beak like a sword.

And that little kiwi kept rustling through the woods at about twelve feet away. I stood stock-still behind a tree, exactly how I would be if I’d spotted an elk, moose, bear, or anything else back home. I usually reserve my awe for big animals, but this little guy was so special. Like a miracle amidst my doubt.

And then he came toward me. His skinny beak was mere inches from my shoes (turns out that kiwi actually smell through the tip of their beaks, so something must have been interesting about my smelly hiking boots!). He gave me several good long sniffs, and then he ran away on his little feet, darting into the bush.

I could only stand there, gazing into the thicket of shadows, amazed by my miraculous luck. Amazed by the universe, the God, the forest, the kiwi–whatever it was–that decided I was to be blessed that night.

My reflective period was cut short by another human walking on the track. I heard her before I saw her, and I must have looked crazy because I held one finger to my lips and pointed off in the general direction of the tangled woods with the other. She nearly had a heart attack when she finally noticed me, but then she crept closer. When she was next to me, I told her I’d seen a kiwi and asked if she had a red light. She did, and she shined it into the bush where the kiwi had darted. We didn’t see anything, but I hadn’t heard him run off (in my head, it was a male, but I have no idea). We waited. After a while, she wandered further down the trail, wanting to know what was at the end, but I waited and waited.

And I heard the kiwi rustle again and again. So I knew, for certain, that he hadn’t gone far. When the woman came back, I had a more accurate guess where he was. She shined her red light, and there he was. We watched as he rustled through the undergrowth, then stepped back on the path. I was wearing the right scent, because, this time illuminated by the red light, he came back to sniff my shoes for a few seconds before running off again, those little legs churning.

My kiwi encounter, mere hours after I’d arrived, already made my trek out to the island and the money I’d spent more than worth it. In fact, that encounter would be the highlight of my time on Stewart Island. But, many more good things (not as good as the kiwi, but still very good) were to follow.

The next morning, I planned to walk the beginning of the Rakiura Track, another Great Walk. First, I had to walk 6 kilometers on roads to get to the start of the trailhead. Beginning from the hostel, I walked down to the harbor, where a sea lion was making his way across the main beach to the amazement of the tourists and the amusement of the locals.

The sides of the roads were flowering, the cottages and hotels and local homes tucked in the bush along the roads included some fascinating studies in how people live, architectural styles, and what the tourist draws are. Finally, I reached the beginning of the Rakiura Track, where some Maori myth delighted me. I already knew that the North Island is called Te Ika-a-Māui (the fish of Maui), and the South Island is Te Waka-a-Māui (the canoe of Maui), but I didn’t know that Stewart Island features as the anchor where Maui secured his canoe. (Te Punga-a-Māui or Māui’s anchor stone).

Of course, there are many names and stories, so the more common Māori name for Stewart Island is Rakiura, which means glowing skies, a reference to the Aurora Australis, which can sometimes be seen from Stewart Island, but which I did not get to see. (I missed a spectacular aurora one of the nights I was in Bluff and I still can’t talk about it without feeling a huge weight in my chest–so disappointed I didn’t just walk outside and look up instead of going to bed).

Mere few from the start of the Rakiura Track, another sea lion was sunning himself on the beach. This one was massive and very entertaining to watch. Also a little scary. People say they can move really fast. Even though he was on the beach with a six foot bank and twenty feet separating us, I didn’t know if that was enough!

One incredibly amazing thing on Stewart Island was the vibe of the hostel. As the only hostel on the island, all backpackers end up there. I ran into someone I had met previously and we spent one whole night talking before he left. And the woman who’d had the red light turned out to be one of my roommates. The same woman appeared while I was watching the sea lion. So we walked the beginning of the Rakiura track together and had lunch on the beach. I turned around after lunch and she continued on to walk the whole 3-day, 2-night track, but I was so glad to have made several meaningful, if fleeting, connections on the island.

Walking back to my hostel along the road and strolling the beaches, I also managed to find a gorgeous paua shell. I’d found a few tiny ones and two mostly whole ones in Bluff, but on Stewart Island I found a whole paua shell whose primary color was blue rather than pearl (which was what I wanted–the blue ones are my favorite). Paua is the Māori word for abalone shells, and one of my main goals in my journey to the south coast was to find my own paua shell. With that find, I could be content!

That evening it poured rain, so I was happy as I’d seen an kiwi already as the rest of the hostel donned their rain pants and hats and gloves and set off aglow with red lights.

The next day, I took a water-taxi about seven across the water to Ulva Island. While Stewart Island is known for it’s bird life, Ulva Island is even better known. It’s much smaller at less than 3 square kilometers, but it’s pest-free, meaning that they’ve managed to remove all the mice, rats, stoats, possums, deer–anything non-native to New Zealand. A few paths have been built to allow walking access, but otherwise Ulva Island is quite untouched. It is natural bush home to many of New Zealand’s native birds as well as a great place for natural flora to thrive.

The walking paths supposedly take about 1.5-2 hours to walk, but I decided to stay for 4 hours. I walked so slowly, stopping when I heard bird song, searching the trees for New Zealand’s gems. I didn’t have binoculars or a camera with a zoom lens, so often I couldn’t find the source of the noise, or couldn’t get a good look at (much less a decent photo of) what I was seeing. But it was so peaceful, walking with no intention other than to look and listen. There was nothing to reach at the other end. This was, truly, entirely about the journey because there was no destination.

There were a few numbered posts along the track which corresponded to an entry on my map. I enjoyed reading about the flora, using the bird ID guide to understand exactly what I was seeing, and reading the fun facts about some of the plants.

I met a bird-enthusiast from Colorado on the water-taxi ride back and we chatted during our walk back to town. Then, I saw him again the next morning. Stewart Island has so few people that it feels minuscule, and so few amenities/things to do that the same people are thrown together again and again. I loved that about the town.

From left to right, top to bottom: korimako/bell bird, variable oyster catcher, tui, robin, kaka, fantail, kaka.

My third and last night I went out to wander the same paths. Maybe I’d see another kiwi!

I didn’t, but I walked with the kākās and the wood pigeons and the bellbirds (korimako) and the fantails (piwakawaka). I saw two deer. I watched the world get dark and the forest fall into shadow and all become still.

Stewart Island is amazing. None of those who raved about it were wrong. And Stewart Island is amazing in a way that is hard to put into words, though I have tried my best.

If I had to summarize it, perhaps to a fellow traveler who asked me about my time there, I would say, with the understanding that words are woefully (and frustratingly) inadequate: On Stewart Island, the nature, the bush, the birds, the animals–it’s all right there. Humans have built a little town on the tip of the island, woven their tramping tracks through the forest, moored their boats in protected bays–but it’s not their island. The birds, the sea lions, the penguins, the forest, the dinosaur plant–the island is theirs, and we just get lucky to visit it for a few peaceful, tranquil, unhurried days.