Kiwi!
If you want to spot a kiwi in the wild Long Harry is as good a spot on Earth as any.
Having got horizontal early last night, what’s new there, I thought I’d watch the early morning light from the north-facing picture window. I’m stationed here for much of the day but early on, before there was much light, a small kiwi came staggering up the path, or more correctly the long beak poked ahead with the plump body slowly catching up, bustling past the hut on its way up the hill.
A couple of hours later I’m glancing at the weather out the west-facing window, there’s plenty of it again today, and a larger plumper kiwi does its little dance for a couple of minutes. No stopping its curious motion, seemed successful in its endeavours every 10th prod or so.
Quite the unpleasant day for walking, some drenching showers every now and again. I’m still snug inside of course, but the froth of the whitecaps more apparent in the sunlight, the sea a kind of gunmetal green, massive white plumes down at the point in the distance, a rock larger than your average house alternating between high and dry and fully immersed in the white foam. Somehow a flock of terns is relishing the conditions, between 20 and 30 perhaps, hard to count so many in constant motion, wheeling around and diving at the churning surface, on the water a second or so before a rapid elevation in the breeze.
It might be NZ’s warmest ever recorded winter, beating the balmy 2002 version by half a degree average but it seems benign conditions aren’t going to last any longer, the NWer has already swung around to a direct westerly and when it moves to southerly tomorrow snow is predicted at low levels.
A guide to the night’s accommodation: Long Harry Hut
