Stewart Island 2 - Monday

When I got up, Andrew from Hawick - another visitor at Bunkers from Tuatara, told me the Ulva Island tour was postponed to 1230, so I had my bacon & chatted to Levi, Chrissie & Ray from the US - who'd arrived on the last ferry the day before. They were headed into the hinterland & left shortly after, well protected from the persistence.
Another wood pigeon taken on Ulva - but I'm ahead of myself!
After a bit I walked down to the port, had some chowder at the pub (where there'd been a quiz the night before, which my team would've won if they'd believed me when I told them a mouse & giraffe had the same number of bones in their necks! As it was we came 2nd :-o )
Then I made my way to Golden bay & met Scott & Gulmira from Largs, & Ken, the water taxi man.

It was still persisting!

Ken had to drop a bloke off at the salmon farm, & after he'd disembarked we set off for Ulva & saw some dolphins :-) They were real close & real big. Awesome :-))

There are lots of islands around Paterson Inlet & out into the sound, & apart from the odd introduced tree etc., all the flora & fauna are native. Peeps like Ulva are working hard to keep it that way, & there's an island off the west coast where most of the remaining Kekapo are. They're the highly sexed green parrot Stephen Fry did a prog on.















Eventually we got to Ulva & Ulva told us about the post office there, which had closed the same year the one on the Scottish Ulva (off Mull) had opened.
There're still buildings in the cove which was very sheltered & cutesy.
It was still persisting, but it didn't really matter as we headed off into the trees in search of birds.
Apart from the wood pigeon, the 1st we saw was a Stewart Island robin. It was female & there was also a male hanging about. You can see how tame she was!
That's her & Scott















A close up of a wood pigeon. I'm slowly getting better with a camera!

These 2 are of a big tree - you don't say, Shirl!
It's an introduced one, I think
If you tilt L you can see an Entish face! No idea why blogger didn't rotate the pic?
These are orchids. Ulva got really excited about them.
The next two're a cool couple of trees. I've slept a few times since I took it, & can't remember what they are. Rimu, maybe?
The ferny thing is a male Rimu shrub. The girls are thinner & spikier
The next one's a cool tree with a hole. Totara, I think. It's got a nice reddish bark.
Then there's some translucent fern. Not sure if you can see from this, but I could see my skin through it!
Flowers!
Then a hole where a kiwi may have slept?
We wandered around the bush for about 2 hours & came out on to this beach.
See next blog for what happened next!
OAO