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Ulva Island is small island nestled in a bay near Oban, Stewart Island, New Zealand. If you are in Oban, you can catch a water taxi across and spend a day there. Plenty of endemic birds for photographers and nature lovers! A picture is a thousand words…

Perhaphs I should have called this little anecdote “the Kiwi” because that is essentially what it is about!  Understandably, it one of those birds that is high on the list to see/photograph in New Zealand, but there are some problems. You might expect that, since all three species are exceedingly rare.  Nevertheless I encountered more problems that I had anticipated, primarly because one is not allowed to use flash on them! I am not sure what scientific evidence there is to support this idea, since in all my years of photographing birds and other animals, I have never seen any of them react to a flash! ….and I have seen plenty of postcard shots of Kiwis taken with flash.

But in any case all of that aside – for the greater unwashed, heathen public like us, it seems to be the rule, and so you won’t be able to photograph them in a wildlife park or if you go with a guide to check out wild ones at night.  You might be able to pay a wildlife park some quantity of money to arrange a session but I didn’t go down that path!

I decided to play by the rules and go for some daylight shots of a wild Kiwi…in natural habitat!  So how does one do that? Well, I will save you some time and effort and tell you all about it here.

The best  place (the only place, so I am told) to see them in daylight is Stewart Island, at the extreme south of the South Island.  The main settlement there is Oban and while there might be some Kiwis that hang around the town area, I certainly didn’t see any sign of them. So that was trip number one to the Island with no Kiwis! For trip two, I decided on a more radical approach! I booked a seat on a light aircraft and flew from Invercargill on the mainland, direct to Mason Bay on the far side of the Island. We landed on the beach and with not much effort, we walked up to the DoC Hut behind the beach (you see it as you circle to land, so no prizes for finding it).  The Hut is reasonably sparten with two main sections, a ‘living room’ with wood heater, and a few bedrooms in the other section – bunks with plastic covered mattresses.  You need to take your own sleeping bag etc and food, stove and of course, I had some camera gear…together with clothes and other essentials the pack weighed just over 20kg!!!  A slight overkill, but you never what you may see, hey? Geting there was day one.

Day two – I dragged out a 300mm lens, small tripod and NO flash (!!!) and went for a walk along the track that leads inland. In times past it was a road, and so it is quite well formed as it pushes through a great deal of very dense shrubbery about 8 to 10m tall. I walked about 500m and stopped to take in the scenery…. “so this might be good Kiwi habitat…..?” I thought. At that moment, a Kiwi walked out of the undergrowth and came snorting up to my shoes,  inspected them carefully and then started shuffling along the path. (Their nostrils open near the end of the beak and so they detect their food by smell… snorting in the process!). I spent a heart-pounding three minutes trying to get far enough away to fit the bird in the picture with the 300mm lens. Success! So there we go. Easy really! I saw a bird in the same place the next day as well. No flash that day either!

The walking track actually leads up to an old farm house that DoC appear to have taken over as storage. While I was there I met some deer hunters and we discussed Kiwis at length. They showed me an area immediately behind the old farm house – a large area of dense hummock grasses where once an airstrip had been built. A few drums still mark the edges of it. In this area, they see Kiwis quite often. I lurked around there for two days but never saw any in that area. Plenty of diggings etc, so they do feed in the area, so it’s worth staking out.  I did however hear them calling!

So to answer a  question that might have just crossed your mind; yes they shoot deer in this area, in relative proximity to the walking track where ‘trampers’ (known as hikers or walkers to non-NZ folk) wander past! It seems to be quite safe, although the guys I met stressed that if you walk around the old airstrip, you should wear a high visibility veste. You can buy them at all the outdoors stores.  I really like the NZ’s approach to safety! In Australia the various parks authorities would have a heart attack if they had that situation in their parks! In NZ, you are expected to use your brain and take your own initiative to do things safely. Good on them!

So having taken my pictures, I decided to set out to do the southern walking track. Not a good idea with 20+kg on your back. I will say no more! Don’t try it with 20kg or even if you have minimal gear or doubt your fittness…just don’t do it! I am not sure about the northern tracks, but on the whole, I believe they are easier. The smart thing to do is to fly back out.

While you are there, you should also get a water taxi out to Ulva Island. It’s a great place to see/photograph a variety of endemic NZ birds. You should keep at least a full day aside for that!  The Water Taxi that I used….Stewart Island Water Taxis (Ian)

The airline that flys to Mason Bay from Invercargill: Stewart Island Flights

You should register to use the DoC (Department of Conservation) Huts: DoC.

Places to stay at Oban – they range from ridiculously expensive to very reasonable! You might start with the DoC brochures that can be sent to you via snail mail (email them at the above link). The internet advertised accommodation tends to be in the higher price range if you want some luxury.