Yesterday I drove reasonably aimlessly around and visited Pukaha Mount Bruce which is a wildlife sanctuary. The weather was mild drizzle so most of the aviaries were silent and, in most, no birds could be found. However a kokako was on show and agreed to pose for this picture.A good thing was the kiwi nocturnal house. Kiwis are nocturnal characters so wildlife sanctuaries reverse their day by lighting them up at night and having them in near darkness during the day. This convinces the kiwis they are living in the northern hemisphere and they happily wander around sticking their long beaks into the ground foraging for grubby things while visitors goggle at then through the glass walls of their 'homes'(after allowing the advised ten minutes for their eyes to adapt to the 'night'. But:
This is due to their long beaks, which have nostrils at the end of them. As the length of a birds beak is measured from the tip of the beak to the nostril, the Kiwi has the shortest beak of any bird.
Of course, as the nocturnal house was dark I couldn't take any pictures (flash not allowed).
Female kiwis must have a hell of time as their eggs are about six times bigger than expected for a bird of their size and leads to speculation that they may originally have been much bigger, almost reaching Moa proportions..
Today the x-Cook Strait fairies were cancelled because the weather was too bad but over the hill in the Wairarapa it was quite nice until after lunch when the rain arrived.I took a drive through Gladstone and the surrounding areas and found some rather strange things popping up in fields and on fences. the countryside reminded me of Ladner in places and rural Ohio in others. I tried to include Stonehenge Aotearoa but I was too early - visitors from 2pm!
Here we have a big bull, a mushroom, a blue Cape Cod house (very unusual for NZ), a strange what appeared to be a chimney, a mailbox, a welcoming gate, a commemoration of an aviator, his plane, a crashed cyclist, multiple signposts, a pink Christmas cracker, a broken house, a really, really broken house, a Meccano man, and some llamas who were quite affronted that I took their picture.
