Day 7: Te Anau to Dunedin

Another day of driving, and another day of few birds.The day started in Te Anau and ended in Dunedin, but the first drive that has not contained near-continuous, jaw-dropping scenery. I got but one life bird, and I’m not even sure what it was beyond an albatross and not a Royal Albatross, northern or southern.

In the morning, we headed east out of Te Anau, passing through kilometers of uninterrupted farmland with the only birds appearing in large numbers being Australasian Harriers, Spur-winged Plovers, Paradise Shelducks, and Australasian Magpies. Just west of Gore, there was a turn of for the town of Bush, and then forty-four kilometers beyond Gore was Clinton. Mom checked her maps and it turns out that the road from Gore to Clinton was called the “Presidential Highway.”

The rest of the road to Balclutha, where the turn-off for Nugget Point is, was rolling farmland, though there was one exciting event for me: the return of Purple Swamphens to the wet fields. At Balclutha, we turned south on the road to Kaka Point, partway between Balclutha and Nugget Point. Here, I picked up my first Red-billed Gulls, Variable Oystercatchers, and Little Pied Shags for Otago.

We reached Nugget Point after about half an hour, parked the car, and trekked out to the point. Partway through the hike, I looked down to the cliffs below and found large quantities of Spotted Shags flying about, another new Otago species. Mom and Sarah had gotten pretty far ahead by this time, so Dad and I rushed to catch up to them. The four of us made it out to the head, upon which there is a pretty white lighthouse. Looking down from the deck around it, I saw Spotted Shags, Red-billed Gulls, Kelp Gulls, White-fronted Terns, and New Zealand Fur Seals. We took some pictures of the rugged yet beautiful coastline near the head and then started back in.

On our way back, I stopped to check a flock of distant gulls for albatrosses, and Dad stopped with me. As Mom and Sarah continued down the trail, I brought my binoculars up and focused on the distant group. One of the white birds took off on huge, long wings. It was not a flock of gulls, these were albatrosses. My first ever albatrosses. They were about a quarter mile distant, too far for me to reliably identify, and the flock was about thirty or so birds, very large for animals that are usually seen in ones or twos. Hoping to be able to identify them later on, I snapped twelve pictures of them with my camera, at up to eighty times magnification.
Albatrosses

Dad and I caught up with Mom and Sarah just before the car, then we drove north, through Balclutha, to Dunedin. In Dunedin, we toured the Cadbury factory, which was a lot of fun, and we actually got to see it while work was being done. From Dunedin, we drove out to our place, “The Homestead,” halfway out on the Otago Peninsula. I downloaded the albatross pictures onto the computer, studied them for forty minutes, and came to the conclusion that they were either White-capped Albatrosses or Salvin’s Albatrosses.

61. Albatross sp. (White-capped/Salvin’s) – 641