Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

Redheaded Flycatcher

I procure flies. I am the Renfrew of Cape Jackson. Catch cheeps, a fly buzzes fatly by and whatever I may be doing is disrupted by my pursuit of that fly for her snack. I wake in the morning to the first fly buzzing, I stare obsessively at moths in the night, my eyes follow insects and judge them on their plumpness and how easily I might nab them for this tiny ravenous insistent bird.

At least I’m not the parent of an Emperor Penguin chick, walking the 75 mile hike from crèche to ice edge, diving into waters cold and infested with orcas and leopard seals, catching fish, then tramping the 75 miles back to baby to regurgitate the fish.

Catch is hard enough to feed. At least she’s past the stage of my needing to chew his meal for him and spit it up into his tiny maw. As it is, I go to ridiculous lengths to feed him.

I could settle for dead flies, left dessicated on the windowsills of the lodge and the woolshed. But I can tell by the dry rustling sounds they make, and the expression on Catch’s face as they go down, that she is disappointed in me. She greets me less eagerly afterwards. She looks at me after being handed a dried up mayfly husk, one long hairlike mayfly leg still protruding carelessly from her beak, and it is not with gratitude.

When I approach her with a fat brown fly gripped carefully between thumb and forefinger, vibrating loudly against its fate, she nearly knocks herself out leaping to my side of the cage and sticking as much of herself as will fit through the bars of her prison. She will snatch it sharply and firmly from me, wild with excitement and glee. She’ll hop to the floor of the cage, buzzing fly gripped tightly perpendicular in her beak and half the size of her head, and will bang it on the floor repeatedly. I think this performs two functions: to knock the insect silly and still, and to reposition it in such a way she can get it down. Sometimes it ends up headed down tail first and the wings get caught on her cheeks almost in her eyes. She pauses, bobs a few times and spits it back out to turn it around. Mostly she gets it head first and she swallows it fly still kicking madly.

After her first few live flies, the expression on her face was precious. Almost as if she was listening to the fly as it vibrated its way down her gullet, still kicking. Her previous caretaker, Julia, had not caught live flies for her, only dead ones. So catch has high expectations of me now. I try. Despite my absolute visceral disgust.

I hate flies. I really and truly hate flies. There are few things in my life that give me the heebie-jeebies, and flies are one of them. I hate the sound of dried fly husks as you sweep them off a windowsill. I hate the fly swatter fly splatter. I am on the edge 0of spewing with these tasks.

But, for the love of a bird, here I am chasing and catching live flies in my bare hands and carrying them from one building more heavily populated with flies to the woolshed where Catch waits to eat. Euw. Double euw. Add more euws to the discovery of tiny maggots in the jars I transport/store the flies in within moments after my catching a fly in it. This latter bit has grossed me out mightily, as they lay and lay and lay these tiny ecru wigglers so that the sides and floor of the jar is coated in them. In order to stop this I have taken to placing the fly filled jar in the fridge, to slow their metabolism down to nothing. Or in the freezer.

I warn Ron each time, so he is not startled by the jar of flies in the fridge.

I am also obsessively washing my hands after every fly fed Catch. Aw hell, I wash my hands just thinking about it.

posted by: coldwish at 13:42 | link | comments (4) |
nz 2007

Life With Silvereye, and Death

Catch died in the night. I had suspected something was wrong when she didn’t respond to the other silvereyes outside the day before. I also found her napping several times during the day. She did bathe, but didn’t hop eagerly around the lawn catching little bugs and drinking dew drops from blades of grass as she had previous days. She preened desultorily after her bath and nearly fell asleep in the warm sun on the grass. I watched over her, chasing off predatory eager wekas thinking “lunch”. Then I brought her inside.

How lucky I was to have had the chance to get to know this wee wild bird. How unusual of her to have settled in so easily after being rescued, to life in a cage, being fed by humans. She was quite content and very responsive to interaction with me. Understanding somehow that I was not to be feared, but to be greeted and inspected carefully for what I may have brought her. I spent half my time opening windows, letting in flies, closing windows behind them, stalking said flies, trying to catch the flies, then feeding them to Catch. This tiny green and grey bird with its white-rimmed eyes kibitzed my every attempt.

When I sat next to her cage reading, she always stood on a twig nearest to me quietly, not running from my presence, but somehow seeking the solace of my company. I fed her, cleaned her cage, gave her new branches and greenery every other day, took her outside to hop happily about in the grass and bushes around the house, defended her from circling wekas. Something was lost in her; her fear response. My shadow did not faze her when I stooped to bring her back in to safety. I listened to her eagerly respond to the other silvereyes, and now wherever I go in NZ I recognize the cry of the silvereye deep in bushes, and my heart leaps at the familiarity of the sound, as if I am being spoken to again. I saw her watch the fantail who daily came in the open windows of the woolshed to catch bugs and talk to itself in the mirror. I think it depressed her a bit to see such acrobatic flight, when it was denied her. But generally she was a content and happy little bird during her sojourn in my care.

I inspected her body the next morning and discovered a fair raging infection at the base of her tail, which must have been what killed her.

Then I fed her corpse to the wekas.

Circle of life, y’know.

I was incredibly lucky to have known her.

posted by: coldwish at 13:39 | link | comments (1) |
nz 2007

Life With Silvereye III

I swear this small creature sleeps so soundly she probably snores. She sleeps deeper than I do, and is undisturbed by late night visitors, bad TV commercials, wind howling and whistling through the eaves, and the bright lights of headlamps shone directly on her in a dark room.

She perches, both legs wide apart, feet gripped tightly, on a slight branch near the top of her cage, preferably in the open, not under a leaf, or backed against anything. She tucks her head completely under her good wing and her back feathers stand straight up around her face. Silver-rimmed eyes clenched tightly shut, her entire body heaves with her breaths. She is almost impossible to wake, even deliberately. Last night I had to move the cage after dark, after she was already asleep. I tapped lightly on the side, expecting her to unfold in an explosion of feathered alertness. Nope. She snored on. I spoke to her, blew on her and clapped my hands. No response, deep sleep continued. I shook the cage a little. Nothing. I ran my fingers musically up the wires. Okay, her head popped out from her wing and she deigned to open ONE little eye halfway, with an obvious grumpiness. She saw me. I said “hi” and picked up the cage, assuming she was awake. Not exactly. The picking up of the cage unbalanced her, knocking her over backwards on her twig perch. Her eyes popped entirely open, she looked startled and righted herself, and as I carried the cage gently across the room she went right back to sleep, head under her wing.

No wonder the introduction of night-stalking weasels and possums and rats and stoats to NZ has such a devastating impact on the bird population. NZ birds sleep the sleep of the innocent, or the dead. Where is the sensible constant awareness of one’s surroundings? The one eye open cat nap?
Do birds snore?

And why can’t I sleep that hard and long?

posted by: coldwish at 13:38 | link | comments |
nz 2007

Life With Silvereye II

A day with no blowflies but winds wildly buffeting the woolshed and Catch had to make do with fresh frozen flies collected the day before from the Lodge. She did not want to wait for them to defrost, but after his first attempt at a frozen fly she nearly knocked herself over trying to soften the meal by beating it against a branch. I supplemented her meal with a few large slow moths, easily half Catch’s size, captured the night before while she slept. The mighty effort of banging them about, subduing them, and crushing them enough to swallow so exhausted the tiny thing, that she sat on a branch soon after panting loudly, chest heaving rapidly until she fell asleep, eyes falling shut on full daylight.

Her wing and tail look like a dead loss, rendering her flightless. She nonetheless leaps off tall counters to smack onto the floor, falling always to one side as her wing cannot extend, onto her back. She is unfazed by my looming shadowed approach and will crouch quite contentedly in my hand or on a finger while I stroke her chest ever so delicately. At this touch she fluffs her chest feathers and tilts her head up slowly, eyes at half mast. Is this bird pleasure?

Her rescue from a ravening weak left her severely damaged and scarred externally, with a bald spot on the back of her golden mossy head, one small green wing devoid of long feathers and drooping down. Her tail looks scarred at the base and the remaining feathers seem stuck together and immobile. Regardless they provide little balance or counterweight.

Blithely and bravely she is getting on with life, hopping and tilting, eating tiny berries from the purple festooned branches I place in her cage. She loves the flies and moths and other bugs I find for her. She takes great delight in a round slice of orange or a piece of pear, In her hunger, or eagerness, she hops to my end of the cage and pokes her head out to inspect what I may have brought her. Each eye is framed in miniscule, almost undetectably small, white feathers, ringed around it, making her expression seem all that more attentive and clear.

posted by: coldwish at 13:37 | link | comments |
nz 2007

Life With Silvereye I

Some warm days it sounds like Heathrow airport in the woolshed, with all these blowflies jetting madly about, driving poor Catch bonkers with lust for their juicy fat buzzy bodies. She barrels around the cage peeping sharply with excitement. She exclaims insistently from the cage at one end of the “airport”.

posted by: coldwish at 13:36 | link | comments |
nz 2007

Blog Bulimia

Just added about 5 entries all in one fell vomitous swoop. Couldn't post from Queen Charlotte, so I wrote myself emails and just cut & pasted them as soon as I had access. Sorry about the spew of words all at once.

I've got more to say but need to be somewhere where it doesn't cost $9NZ for an hour of access. Out-freakin'-rageous.

Am about to attempt the Tongariro, if the weather allows it. It's rainy and dismal right now, nil views and predicting hail & freezing on the volcano. It may not be on.

posted by: coldwish at 14:09 | link | comments |
nz 2007

Barefootin' It

I have spent much of my time here, since leaving the Ice, barefoot. I drive barefoot, I hike often barefoot, I wander barefoot, I go into supermarkets and stores and restaurants barefoot. My feet are adjusting to this use, and I am relearning the joys and freedoms. My feet are brown for my pale skin, much of it dirt, much of it sun. My soles are stained green from grass and gold from sheep dags, dusted with pale dirt. I pluck grass and flowers between my toes as I wander. I tread carefully on stony ground, still not blithe about the sharp stones that line many parking lots and paths.

My feet tingle with happiness and use. I feel each tiny muscle in each toe, each tendon on the tops of my feet, my calves aches with their unusual use, my ankles need to be stretched and rotated each night.

I climb and descend sand dunes, clinging and curling for better grip, muscles strained against the effort. I slide down wet grassy slopes, I step in sheep dags fresh and old, I set my feet in cold streams clear and refreshing. I tromp on thistles and prickers and deftly remove them from my feet each time.

I love being barefoot.

I have not stopped despite the risks. The risks are not glass and metal and suchlike, so much as bees and wasps browsing the low flowers in the meadows where I tramp. Distracted by a sheep as I crested a grassy cliffside knoll by Cape Farewell, I stepped on one such risk, a stinging insect I never saw, just felt. It did not sting like a bee, more like a wasp. I was immediately one-legged and muttering "Ouch! Damn!" and much worse, as the tiny pain expanded from the arch of my left foot to the rest of my foot.

It soon faded, and I had a long walk back down the slippery grass slope, aware of a dull thudding sensation in the arch of my foot. "Them's the break's," I thought, "but it wasn't that bad." I got on with my day, relatively unaware of my foot, but continuing barefoot.

Until 3am on the spot that night when I woke up to the fiercest, deepest, rawest itch in my foot that I have ever felt. I scratched it madly, almost drawing blood on the very sensitive sole of my foot, right around the arch and up over the top. I applied ointments, unguents, cremes, and eventually bandaged it in hopes I would not continue my scratching of it. I fell asleep with a sock on, and it took many a mental game to draw my mind away from the need to scratch.

By the next morning it was swollen up and mottled, largely from my efforts to get inside my foot to the source of the itch. But all booted up for the tramp in to Cape Jackson from Ship's Cove, my foot was inaccessible to me and any sharp objects I could apply to it. I forgot about it for the most part, and even when I unshod myself at the end of the long trek, I did not feel the need to scratch. "Ah, wonderful!" I thought, "I have defeated this odd reaction."

Until 4am exactly when I woke once more wanting to fillet my sole with my fingernails, a nailfile, a nailbrush, a comb, anything I could reasonably lay my hands on. Addled by the itch I finally broke down and took a Sudafed, thinking perhaps the anti-histamine aspect would stop the itch. It may just have, but the drugs knocked me out before I could decide if they worked.

Later the next day, to Ron's other WWOOFer, Julia, I mentioned the itch. She immediately identified the source of my sting as the red and copper native wasp whose colours I have so admired in passing. She had the unfortunate episode of while gardening having the wasp crawl up the back of her shirt, sting her, then fall down the back of her pants and sting her four more times. She woke in the middle of the next few nights rubbing her backside raw against her sheets, and spent her days backing up against doorjambs and tree trunks to satisfy her insane scratch need.

At least I now knew the culprit.

But still, I run around barefoot as much as possible.

Stings happen. The other sting I got was in the centre of my forehead on my hairline, and I do not wear a hat in fear of that happening again, do I? I wear the hat against the rain & the sun, and even so, rarely. I wear boots for ankle support and protection on long hikes, not because I might bet stung again.

Honestly though, just writing about it here, makes my foot itch again. I have a nice rough stone I can rub it against.

Gotta go. Barefoot.

posted by: coldwish at 14:06 | link | comments (1) |
nz 2007

Sunsets, Sunrises, Moon Shadow Walking

From Kohaihai Beach I travelled to the Golden Bay area, spending one night in my car in the mountains on the way there. I had not really found much to appeal to me in the Golden Bay descriptions I had read and heard, it being populated much too heavily for my taste, and renowned for the large number of sunny days they have. Ick. Sun. I get more than enough of that on the Ice. But a friend in Greymouth had described the Abel Tasman Track as the best she's ever done, and I had just been on the finishing end of the Heaphy, which starts in the same area across the mountains.

So off I headed. As soon as I left the wild and wet West Coast, with its lush green forests, I was easily depressed by the overly regimented agricultural and brown dry land through Motueka and up into Takaka and the Golden Bay environs. But I was also charmed by the obviously artistic and bohemian nature of its towns and people. Each driveway had a sign indicating something for sale up in the homestead, from organic fruit and veg to home woven wool items, honey, pottery, stone carving and the like. I stopped in at several of these places, impressed by the variety and craft found therein, as I meandered up the valley floor to the coast.

In Motueka I picked up a hitchhiker, a young Kiwi fellow named Chris who was headed to the Abel Tasman track, and as I had yet to decide where I was going that day, I let his destination take me over. I delivered him to the start of the track, but found little there to appeal to me. After dropping him off I continued around the Bay, over headlands twisty and windy and steep to the next river valley over to the West. There I stopped at an I Site--an official tourist information site--with free maps and wonderfully informed and enthusiastic women staffing it. I was pointed in the direction of Wharariki Beach, told that low tide was at 6:32pm. It was fairly late in the day by then, 3:30pm or so, and the light was soon to be fading.

I drove west along the waterfront, the river valley wide and flat, salt marsh extended on a delta-like plain to the sea. Low tide revealed sandy mud flats chock a block with a wide variety of wading fishing birds, from herons to geese to swans to oystercatchers. Passing this, right to the end of the paved road I sought the Beach and the sunset that loomed ever ahead of me. I arrived after several kilometres through pastureland on a gravel road at a carpark, with promises of a 20-minute walk to this allegedly glorious beach. It was very windy, with a bit of a chill, and I did not know how long I'd be gone, so I loaded my daypack with snacks, water, my headlamp, a windbreaker, my camera and extra batteries and headed off over the first stile into sheep territory. I followed the white sandy path through short-cropped grassy hills to the start of the dunes, then removed my shoes and strode henceforth barefoot.

The sun was inches above the horizon and flame red, casting orange gold light onto the dunes and grass and cliff edges of this enclosed beach. Low tide left the beach's sand exposed flat and wide. A few people passed me returning to their cars; a few others were there for the sunset. The sunset itself was not spectacular. Colourful, certainly, but cloudlessly the sun descended into the ocean. The framing of the sunset was the cliffs and large improbably stones shot through with caverns and tunnels carved by the ocean's time and surf. I watched the sun's blood red globe sink to the ocean level until it shot through one of these holes with solid sea mist rays thrown up in its way by the ravening surf that rolled endlessly onto the beach and stones.

The texture of the dunes, wind-blown ripples and patterns were lit boldly in relief in the gold low light. Maze-like, parallel and joined breaks, shadowed on one side, the ruffled texture untouched by other feet went on over rolling dunes and circular rises topped Bart Simpson-like by tufts of sharp dune grass.

Even the few surfers there retreated upon the disappearance of the sun. I was just getting started. In the dimming light, my eyes adjusting rapidly, I explored the shoreline by the stone cliffs. I found caves and sandy tidepools and entered both, frequently to be met with a strong sea smelling cool breeze from somewhere deep inside, indicating a through passage. I explored to the extent my headlamp and my own common sense allowed. The tide was incoming.

The horizon along the sea remained amber fading upward into pale blue then darker blues to night sky for a long time. The stars came out bold & crisp, and the quarter moon hung like a dislodged crown (not my original image, I borrow from Nick Cave, that marvellous singer/songwriter/wordsmith) over the limestone outcroppings and stand alone masses knee deep in the waves. Still I wandered barefoot in the sand, in the dark, now by myself on the beach. The dark outlines of stones stood starkly against the sea, sand and sky. I did not leave until 8:30, two hours after sunset, and then only reluctantly.

Even at only a quarter full, the moon lit my path brightly enough I still went without my headlamp, trotting barefoot along the glowing white sand path back to the carpark. My shadow advanced in front of me along the path.

I wasn't leaving. The last car there, and no signs boldly apparent that car camping was disallowed, I stayed the night in my car, fully intending to experience dawn on Wharariki Beach too. An hour before sunrise I woke with the greying of the sky, socked in by morning fog, echoing with the complaints of cattle and sheep, paradise shelducks and other morning creatures. As the sun started to make more efforts to rise and burn off this moisture, I was off to the beach again, before 6am. Barefoot, not even carrying my shoes. As I reached the beach the sun breached the green hills behind me, glowing gently through the mists.

I had the beach to myself, once more at low tide, and I struck off to the other side, which promised caves and labyrinths through the stones on the sand beach. I was sidetracked though, by the distant surf's edge sight of a seal frolicking in the water. I approached carefully, and on my way to the sea found myself standing next to a tide pool in which two tiny sleek black seal pups played. They rolled and leapt and dove and jumped up out of the water. They peered curiously at me, dismissing Mama Seal's husky grunts and barks from high on the cliff above us. They chased their own tails in tiny circles, stood on their head in the shallow waters, hind flippers waving above the water. They chased each other, wrestled, and shot torpedo swift under the clear waters, framed clearly against the white sands. Half an hour or more I stood at pool's edge watching them play, enchanted and grinning like a fool.

At low tide, this beach is a wonderland of things to explore. The high tide pulls in close to the shore along the gently sloping sand, swallowing the ankles of the stones fallen there, smothering much of the broken pieces from the limestone cliffs in sand. The stones disrupt the sea's retreat and the sand's advance, leaving behind a veritable tangle of clear pools and dams and rivulets of water stitching its way back to the sea. Gigantic caves, stone grottoes, church-like and ballroom-sized spaces, tented by stone, all with sand floors soft and moist. I walked into many, through more to the other side, ever aware of the tide's advance on this playground. I rounded corners on odd pools with water running into it on all sides from within the sand that walled it, tiny deltas and bas relief sand sculptures, temporary and collapsing, reforming. I waded in, I jumped over, I explored around and through these jumbled smooth stones, made from the same cliffs that rose above me, exposing the history of the land built with sediment then thrust up out of the sea. Rounded and smoothed seashore stones were cemented in solid layers interleavened by stripes of blond-gold smooth limestone.

The sand itself was unusually soft, not by virtue of its fineness, though extremely fine indeed, but to walk on. Along the surf line, and in unexpected places on the beach where the water reached at high tide, each footstep would sink an inch or more in. A trail of feet like cookie cutouts in cookie dough, sharp edged and definitely a footstep, each toe clearly outlined.

Eventually the day progressed, and by 8:30am, though my explorations were incomplete, I retreated from the oppressive sun in the cloudless sky. By 9:30am I was back on the road, and easily distracted by small signs on the way back, asking me to explore further areas of this coast, still bounded by the raucous ever-active Tasman Sea.

I'll certainly be back to Wharariki Beach in the future, and intend to explore more of the Farewell Spit area allowed to me without cost.

posted by: coldwish at 14:05 | link | comments |
nz 2007

Shag Dancing

From a distance the pied shag of NZ can be mistaken for a long necked Adelie penguin as it stands on the beach in its black and white finery, upright and staunch against the sea. Several times, until they stretched their necks up, my Ice befuddled eyes and my frosted brain interpreted them as penguins. But oddly, dancing penguins. Swaying back and forth from foot to foot, lifting one leg at a time and shaking the other black webbed foot a few times, then switching feet. I could not quite understand what they were doing, having never seen shag dance, let alone do the electric boogaloo like that.

I had left Pav's for Karamea and the start of the Heaphy Track on the northern most road-accessed part of the West Coast. I camped the night in my car at the beach campground there, and walked the first few hours of the track along the Tasman Sea-side, white sand beaches of large grains identifiable as small coral and peach and white coloured quartz crystals. Larger pieces of quartz granite at the river mouth by the campground looked like chewed bubble-gum so pink were they.

This area, by Kohaihai Beach, is the domain of sandflies; the sky at dusk and dawn are viscous with them. I packed a daypack with a lunch and water, my camera and sunscreen, and DEET-powered insect repellent, and headed north along the coast, coming out through forested headlands to new beaches (Scott Beach then Koura Beach) over several swinging bridges, tightly strung across streams, gullies and rivers, along paths wide and smooth or sandy and overhung by cliffs of stone. The Tasman Sea pounding and charging at the edge of the land with constant force. Some places I could feel the land vibrate. The sand beaches, though white and inviting, were steeply inclined by the wave actions. I chose a beach route in some areas but the sandflies were so numerous and irritating if I so much as paused to take a photo, that I retreated to the path and the shade.

I stopped at Koura Beach to sit for a few minutes and eat lunch. But I ended up eating sandflies with every bite, even if they did not bite me. I lasted maybe five minutes tops there. I could see the pied shags as they stood just out of the pounding surf up the beach in the sand, as with many NZ birds dismissive of my approach within 10-15 feet (2-3 metres) to photograph their elegant upright black and white suited dance. As I got closer, I divined easily the reason for their odd tapdancing. Each bird shifted weight onto one webbed foot and shook the other foot in the air every few seconds. They were each in a cloud of low, foot-level sandflies biting them constantly. So they just shifted from foot to foot, shaking their feet of sandflies.

Thus the dance, and thus my tramping sans breaks for the remainder of my day.

posted by: coldwish at 14:04 | link | comments |
nz 2007

Warm Rain Showers

It rained the entire week I was at Pav's, often a solid downpour. One night it got cold enough to leave snow icing the tops of Mt Elliott, at whose toe we nestled. But it warmed up for one of my last days there, and the rain was constant and warm. I chose to shower in the open. None of this start-the-fire-wait-an-hour-for-a-hot-shower deal for me. I shucked off my clothes and ran outside stark naked to the elements and the wekas, leaving two bewildered folks behind me in the hutt, huddled by the warm fire, exclaiming how cold it was. I waltzed and danced across the field in this warm rain, followed by the ever-expectant wekas, soaked and cleansed within minutes by the warm drops coating me.

I have reassessed my understanding of cold after being at the South Pole, and despite their protestations, when invited to join me, that was not it. That was a warm wet embrace from the sky, a cleansing refreshing drench on my needful bare skin.

posted by: coldwish at 14:02 | link | comments (1) |
nz 2007