Hokatika Driftwood

To Hokatika, New Zealand

Fortunately, the weather app’s prediction of 100% chance of rain all day did not actually materialize. We still got plenty of precipitation, just not a constant deluge.

Morning hot chocolate

A little homework

Our sightseeing was limited today to a stop at the West Coast Wildlife Center in the town of Franz Josef Glacier, 25km north of the Fox Glacier. Rowi Kiwi, one of the five kiwi species endemic to New Zealand, live in the neighboring forest, but with numbers in the low hundreds it's very unlikely you'll run into one. The primary predator of the flightless, soccer ball sized bird is the stoat, a small weasel introduced in the 1800’s to try to reduce the overpopulation of introduced rabbits -- sigh.  Pretty much everything introduced to New Zealand from overseas is now considered a pest or invasive species -- deer, rabbits, mountain goats (Tahr and Chamois), feral cats, stoats, and weasels not to mention the California (Radiata) and Oregon (Doug-fir) pines. The aim of the conservation center is to revive the kiwi population by retrieving the eggs from the wild, raising the young kiwi inside the center until they are a kilogram in weight (and able to defend themselves against predators), and then releasing them back into the forest.

The Kiwi conservation center

Inside the center, we got to see live Rowi Kiwi. They were in darkened room, foraging for insects in an enclosure. Those of us with adult eyes joked that what we saw scurrying around may well have been chickens with straws taped to their beaks! We also learned that the kiwi eggs are incredibly large, six times larger than would be expected for a bird of their size. Before laying the egg, so much of the abdomen is taken up that the female cannot eat. The good news, however, is the giant egg's yoke is so large that the newly hatched kiwi is sustained for a full ten days without any additional food.

X-ray of female kiwi.  Now that's a big egg!

We spent the rest of the afternoon heading north to Hokatika, our last spot along the west coast before heading across the mountains and back to Christchurch.  With the steep mountains of the Southern Alps and the huge quantities of rain, we’ve crossed dozens of wide, rocky river basins draining out to the Ocean. The beach next to our campground was littered with driftwood. which must have washed out to sea during winter storms and then back on to the beach.  With that much building material available, the kids wasted no time building a fort and De Ann was soon collecting more rock specimens. We had a quiet evening at camp, and even with the grey skies, it was the end of another beautiful day on the South Island.