What a place this is, the early morning light was bright and so we had a quick trip out before breakfast to see if we could get a look at the Swamp Harrier as its known here ( we know it as a Harrier Hawk ) , we had found a spot that had two or three pairs flying, sadly though we couldn’t get close enough to them to get a really decent photo and so we headed slightly further to a patch on the estuary where we thought we had spotted a distant Royal Spoonbill the day before.
As soon as we rounded the corner, there they were, a pair feeding in the shallows. We moved slowly trying to catch them in the sunlight, beautiful birds and bigger than the normal Spoonbill we see in the UK. Just as we were leaving to go for breakfast, I spotted a splash in the water under an iron post sticking up, and there it was a Sacred Kingfisher, bigger and whiter than our UK version, it sat obligingly for five minutes before flying off low over the water and away. Not a bad trip and all before breakfast !
We had booked a trip around a private farm next to the Royal Albatross centre and so chose to spend the remaining time before hand exploring some more, we had heard of a place called Sandfly Beach, not a very promising name, but it was known to have Yellow Eyed Penguins, and these are sometimes seen during the day so we thought we would give it a go.
We arrived looking down to a magnificent bay of sand and dunes, way down below us, it was a long walk and would be a good climb back out, but we decided it looked worth the effort and we not disappointed. Once down at the beach, we met a ranger who told us there were only two Yellow Eyed Penguins this year, the are critically endangered after all, and they had not been spotted for a while. She thought that following a moult they were probably out at sea feeding, but that there were plenty of Sea Lions and they were a bit rowdy.
We walked along the beach for a mile or so, past Pied Stilts, Red Legged Gulls and the odd sleeping Sea lion until we were met by a group of 7 or 8 Sea lions, male and female , and they were fighting amongst themselves with the young males trying to become the dominant one. They didn’t seem remotely bothered by us, so we sat down in the dunes and watched them until time came to leave and drive back up the long winding road to the head of the Peninsula.
When we arrived we headed up to the farm called Natures Wonders, and were met by the owner who was very keen to show us his land. They run the farm for the wildlife and trips like ours help pay for it. We were driven around in a four wheel drive quad bike type machine with space for six people if you didn’t mind being friendly.
We drove along the cliff tops, past old building left over from World War Two, now derelict and never used in anger. The air was filled with Harrier Hawks, Welcome Swallows, and Black Backed Gulls as we drove down towards the base of the cliffs where the Fur Seals were busy raising their pups, the bay is sheltered and the Sea Lions which hunt the Fur Seals didn’t often get this far out so the young were safe.
The farmer chooses not to intervene with nature to protect it and the Seals are left to their own fate, but from a decked area we could watch them before walking along to where the wild Little Blue Penguins were roosting. The stay here while they moult their summer feathers, during this time they are not waterproof and so can’t swim to hunt and for a month; they loose a lot of their body weight because of this. As a result of this forced inland stay , during this time they are easy to see during the daytime and they had roosted along the wooden decking a walkway and so we had a great view of them.
Next on the tour was a trip to a beach in a bay, which as it is on private land had not had anyone step foot on it for 25 years. Undisturbed, the Yellow Eyed Penguins use this beach as their nesting site, there was only two here this year as their numbers are in fast decline. This pair were a good half mile away on the other side of the beach, but with the help of my zoom lens we managed to see the distant pair roosting high up on the beach wall.
This could well be the only time I ever see these Penguins in the wild, as their numbers are declining so fast that they are forecast to disappear completely in ten years if nothing happens. The government has tried a captive breeding program but it has failed, and all other efforts are also failing at the moment, so the future does not look good for these little birds.
After this great tour we headed back up and had a quick wander around the Royal Albatross centre, again we watched these birds from the top of the cliffs, the sun however and a heat haze made photographing them tricky, but we managed to watch them soaring above, and even saw one stealing a flatfish from a Shag in the sea far below. A great couple of days watching superb wildlife in a wonderful area.
Tomorrow we carry on our trip and are heading to the far South of the Island to an area called the Caitlin’s, where we are unsure what wildlife we will find but we know there will be some waterfalls and windy beaches were surely some wildlife will be lurking !
