All I ask is that you love me...

This moment is just too sweet not to blip--even though I have photos of three other previously unseen and unblipped birds from my trip to Ulva Island today. Nuzzling wins out this time.

Despite feeling relatively normal throughout my long pelagic cruise yesterday, my body still responded the same way the day after. Which is to say, I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck. I really wanted to lay in bed (i.e. in my tent on the cold hard ground) all day but seeing as this might be my only shot at Ulva, I forced myself down to the harbor and caught the water taxi over.

Lemme tell you: It was the right decision. The weather today was spectacular: sunny, warm, breezy, tranquil. I spent six hours wandering around the native forest of the predator-free island sanctuary, staring just as much at the plants as the birds. New Zealand native forest is so beautiful, filled with ferns, mosses, broad leaf shrubs, towering hardwoods, and all sorts of plants with tiny leaves and criss-crossy branches, which are thought to have evolved to deter the once-prolific Moa from eating them.

The birds were fantastic too. I was photographing a fern at one point when a Yellow-Crowned Parakeet flew down onto the trail just a meter away and starting turning up the stones on the path with its feet, to uncover the bugs hiding underneath. I froze and stared at it--I had no idea from the guidebook that its colors would be so radiant.

As I walked along the paths I was stalked by Stewart Island Robins, a rare subspecies of the New Zealand Robin that was reintroduced here in 2000. I could hear the high-pitched tinkling of Rifleman fledglings begging for food from their doting parents and the agitated chittering of Brown Creepers, another new species for me.

On the beaches I found Variable Oystercatchers with their adult-sized chicks, the only clue to their youth being the dullness of their colors. Out in the bay an occasional albatross would glide by and Blue Penguins would poke their heads out of the waves to survey their surroundings.

The digital songs of Bellbirds and Tuis echoed through the trees, and once in a while a Tomtit would let out a squeal from somewhere in the understory. I even caught a couple glimpses of South Island Saddleback, another extremely rare endemic that has found sanctuary in Ulva's forests.

And then there were the Kaka. Constantly screeching as they passed by overhead, they would sometimes appear before me in the forest, perched in the trees. The stoic one in this picture was sitting on a branch above the path; I came upon it abruptly because it wasn't making any noise. Just as I noticed it, the other one flew in, landing just beneath the first. It climbed up the branches and leaned in close to the other, cocking its head and gazing at it intently, though the first seemed unaffected. Then the love-hungry one hopped to the other side, cautiously looked up at the other bird's face, and furtively touched its beak to the other's neck. It held its beak there while still the other did nothing. So eventually off it flew, leaving the stoic bird to its solitude. I stayed and watched it until it too flew off. When it did leave, the kaka fell into the space in front of it with wings spread, swooping right past my face and down the corridor the trail cut through the trees behind me. It's not often that birdwatching gives you such a tangible rush.

Tomorrow I'm off to Mason Bay, on the other side of Stewart Island, to spend two nights in the DOC hut. It'll take a one-hour water taxi and a four hour walk to get there. It's time to go find kiwi.