Musical Morning

TRAVELLER

Musical Morning Mark Meredith spends time with the birds

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n a Moonlit quay we were split into groups of six to eight and led up a narrow path into a regenerated forest.

Around 5.45am we reached a dark, wooded area. I could make out benches and chairs that had been laid out on one side of the track where we were invited to sit and wait. As people took their positions I was reminded of being in church: absolute silence and a reverential expectancy among a congregation dressed for the cold, carrying rucksacks and water bottles and lined up along makeshift pews under the night sky.

I was part of the inaugural Lost World Dawn Chorus tour to Tiritiri Matangi Island in the Hauraki Gulf.

This was a chance to hear the result of the repopulation by birds of a reforested island that only 30 years 68 AA Directions Summer 2015

The volume increased dramatically ago resembled a dry, oversized with the arrival of two new players paddock. A young forest now into the avian orchestra: the clear flourishes on the island and it rings, chiming call of bellbirds rising like loudly, bursting with songs – hinting a brass section, tempered by the at how New Zealand once sounded. beautiful, flute-like notes of A familiar call rang out: kokako directly overhead, the crazy, melodious providing soft woodwind sing-song gurgling to a symphony the like and squawking A young forest of which I had never of a tui, followed heard before. by others from now flourishes Chirping sounds different directions on the island and emerged: the somewhere in it rings, bursting whitehead and the darkness. then the stitchbird, New voices began with song the saddleback and to chime in the finally the kakariki. I background, the was entranced, forgetting North Island robin made how cold I had become, sitting itself known. Streaks of grey still waiting for daylight to break. appeared in the sky and I was able And the lighter it became, the more to make out the other members of intense the layers of sound: waves the expedition, intent, concentrating of warbling and chiming, squawks, on the extravaganza taking place chirrups and tweets washing around around us.

TRAVELLER us unseen in the canopy. People were holding out smartphones to record what was by now an unbroken wall of noise.

After about an hour the dawn chorus began to wind down as the sky turned light blue, the volume lowering as players flew off to do what birds do on Tiri which, as far as I could ascertain, was live an active, productive, exuberant life unconcerned by humans or pests.

I broke away from the expedition and headed down a track that led me over the spine of the island to its east coast. I had the island pathways to myself, just me and the birds.

And they were everywhere at this early hour: tuis diving and swooping, chasing each other through the branches of the juvenile forest; saddlebacks, their russet colours glowing in the low sunshine as they hopped from branch to branch.

At the visitor centre I sat down to talk to MaryAnn Rowland, Tiritiri Matangi’s guiding manager responsible for organising the Lost World Tour, and asked her why she had put on this special expedition.

“I thought there are not enough people who get a chance to see what this country could be like and what it clockwise froM top: A tui on Tiritiri Matangi is one of the early risers; the island's main wharf; a stitchbird (hihi), midsong; a watchful bellbird (korimako).

used to be like.”

I told her it made me sad that this was the stage the country had found itself at: where we had to go to an offshore island to see what life should be like on the mainland.

“Absolutely, and this is partly why I wanted to do it, so that people can recognise that. One school that came out, the teachers had taken all the children into the bush beside their school and they’d sat there for 10 minutes in silence listening and they hadn’t heard a thing.

And then she brought them all out here and she made them do the same thing and asked the children to describe it. They called it happy bush and sad bush.

That’s what it’s all about. People don’t know what they’ve lost.”

I asked if she had been nervous that the birds wouldn’t perform that morning.

“Of course I was!” she laughed.

On my earlymorning exploration in some semi-open countryside I had found a takahe plodding through the long grass by the edge of the forest. I was faceto-face, almost, with a bird thought to have been extinct until 1948 when a colony was discovered in the Murchison Mountains in Fiordland. It was a thrilling moment that summed up the magic of what has been achieved on what is now a beautiful island: no more a dry, weed-filled, pest-ridden paddock, but a living, breathing, thriving ark cradling New Zealand’s lost world. ←

tIRItIRI MAtANgI

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in the gulf 1. tiritiri Matangi is a 75-minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland. Lost World tours, to experience the dawn chorus, are scheduled in early spring by 360 Discovery Cruises.

2. Rotorua Island features beaches, walking tracks and heritage buildings and is an ideal day trip destination, accessible by ferry from downtown Auckland.

3. Kawau has bush, beaches, baches and history; regular ferries operate from Sandspit, near Warkworth.

4. Rangitoto and Motutapu are linked by a natural causeway.

Climb the volcano for views of the city and the gulf; explore Motutapu’s walking tracks and WWII bunkers and tunnels.

keeping birds safe t Orokonui Eco-Sanctuary, near Dunedin t Mountain Maungatautari, in the Waikato t Cape Sanctuary in Hawke’s Bay t Rotorua’s Rainbow Springs Kiwi Wildlife Park t Ulva Island, near Stewart Island t Mount Bruce Wildlife Centre, Wairarapa t Kapiti Island Nature Reserve t Zealandia: Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, Wellington

For itineraries and travel inspiration around New Zealand see aa.co.nz/traveller or call into an AA Centre for regional guides and maps.

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