By Isaac Rath, and Katie Milesky

Photos by Isaac Rath

After 20 hours of flying, a 24-hour layover, and the complete loss of a day (RIP March 3rd, 2025, we never got a chance to know you), you would think resting would be the number one thing on our mind when we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on March 4th, 2025, right?. WRONG. Our first thought was “Where can we get a coffee?” quickly followed by “Where’s the nearest birding hotspot?” After some trial, error, and only a little bit of screaming, we got accustomed to driving on the left side of the road, from the right side of the vehicle, and we made our way to Tahuna Torea Nature Reserve. Traveling to a new part of the world is incredible for birders. Nearly every single bird you see is going to be a lifer, so we locate, take photos, and ask identifying questions later. We got a great jumpstart with our first checklist: Black Swans, Australasian Swamphens (locally known as the pūkeko), Tūī, Masked Lapwings, New Zealand Bellbirds and Fantails, Mynas and Welcome Swallows - there were almost too many lifers at once, if such a thing were possible.

After a few hours of exploring on our own while waiting for our host and good friend, Nate, to get back from class, we made our way to the University of Auckland to meet up with him. Within a few minutes of getting there and chatting, we realized what we needed to do - go birding again. We wanted to show Nate the place we’d found and ended up getting another handful of lifers that evening - South Island and Variable Oystercatchers, Swamp Harrier, Eastern Rosella, Sacred Kingfishers, Red Knots, Bar-tailed Godwits, Eurasian Blackbirds, and both European Greenfinch and Goldfinch. It’s always neat to see what changes a few hours and a low tide will bring out. We were most excited about the native birds, seeing as many invasive species were on the islands.

We had a few days to spend with Nate until our plans would take us to the South Island of New Zealand, and we let Nate plan them, and he did not disappoint. Early the next morning, we were boarding a ferry to take us to Tiritiri Matangi, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand about 30 kilometers northeast of Auckland. While most visitors to the island are just there for a few hours in the afternoon, Nate managed to snag us some spots in the bunkhouse, and we were able to spend over 24 hours on the island. Now, maybe you have to be a wildlife and conservation lover to appreciate all that Tiritiri Matangi had to offer, but we were blown away by our short time there. The sunset, the water, the plantlife, it was all incredible. Once we picked our beds and stored the food we’d brought, we got our hiking boots on and went out to explore. We’d already found the not-so-common kōkako and the South Island Takahē, a bird that was thought to be extinct for nearly 100 years that is now breeding on the island, and this was just on the walk to the bunkhouse and lighthouse from the wharf.

We started the afternoon by traveling a bit northeast and finding a good place to snorkel. Now in hindsight, maybe I would’ve done this a bit later in the day because it wore us out a bit, but I still have no regrets. We didn’t see too much besides a few fish, some teeny tiny jellyfish, and some urchins while snorkeling, but it was still a great time. Afterwards, we continued hiking north before deciding that most of the wildlife was going to be more active later in the day, rather than at 3 in the afternoon when it would be the hottest. So we made our way back to the bunkhouse for a nap.

When we set out a few hours later, about 2 hours prior to sunset, we had 3 goals: Tuatara, Little Penguin, and Little Spotted Kiwi. Our best bet to see the penguins was when they were coming in from the sea for the night, so we set ourselves up on the beach and hoped for the best. Patience and luck are a birder’s best friend. This species of penguin is expectedly very small, and to avoid predators, they wait until dark to come in from the sea where they’ve been feeding most of the day. We may not have waited long enough, or maybe we just picked the wrong beach, but we did not get lucky with the penguin that night. The good news is we got to watch some pied cormorants head into their roost for the night, and the sunset was gorgeous from our spot. At about 9:30 pm, we decided to head up the trail to see if we could find the tuatara. There aren’t too many places left on earth that they exist, and I’ll admit that I’d never heard of them until Nate brought them up. That being said, I will let Nate talk about them in his own post. You can find it on our “blog” page, titled “Creature Out of Time: The Last in its Line”.

When we made our way back down to the beach, we got a big surprise when I turned to see something in the light of my headlamp. Foraging in some washed-up plants was our last goal of the night - the little spotted kiwi. We made an unfortunate rookie move - we were all a bit too loud in our surprise and shock, and we spooked it. Luckily, it was meandering away slow enough that I could pull out my phone and get a short video of it for proof, but that was about it. We walked to the other end of the beach and waited in the quiet darkness for a while, appreciated the night sky without the light pollution of the mainland, and hoped the Kiwi would feel comfortable enough to come back out, but it never did. We never ended up finding a little penguin that night, but we did find one deceased on the beach that looked like it had died in the past 24 hours or so. This led to a lot of speculation over what happened to it, seeing as the island is free of predators and, at that point, free of the avian flu we’d seen decimate Gentoo penguin colonies on the Falkland Islands the month before. Despite it only being about 1.5 kilometers or so back to the bunks, we took well over an hour to get there, as we ran into 2 more Kiwis on the way and had to spend some time waiting in the dark, hoping they’d stick around. While we never got another look after the initial one before they went back into the trees, we did get to hear them calling to each other, which was really neat.

Overall, I cannot recommend taking a trip out to Tiritiri Matangi enough. It was a special experience and one of the highlights of our year so far.

Tiritiri Matangi

Creature Out of Time: The Last in its Line

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