Assuaging our guilt in the wild

The bird is as wild as a wolf but it has learned that we visitors are no threat. Rather we have come to feed and photograph, to fling ourselves down before avian claws and to worship. What we crave is absolution. We want to shrive ourselves of species guilt.

On the afternoon of my 61st birthday I am woken by a noise that is either squeal or scream. I roll off the too soft motel bed and part the net curtain. There on the damp path is the Japanese woman from the next unit. She is being assailed by parrots. For this is Stewart Island.

The parrots are ka¯ ka¯ and you’re not supposed to feed them but plenty do. Mrs Japan is offering them a handful of almonds. At the same time her face is nervously averted from the birds and her other arm is raised to ward off the wings. When a ka¯ ka¯ perches briefly on her wrist she squeal-screams again and shakes all over with an orgasmic mix of terror and delight.

Amid the noise and the seismicity, the bird collects a single almond in the delicate tip of its beak. It flutters off to perch upon a hand rail, transfers the almond to the clutch of a reptilian claw and gnaws at it with the underhook of that beak, its black tongue flickering to catch the crumbs.

The bird is as wild as a wolf but it has learned that we visitors are no threat. Rather we have come to feed and photograph, to fling ourselves down before avian claws and to worship. What we crave is absolution. We want to shrive ourselves of species guilt. Forgive us our trespasses, o birds.

For the birds offer a glimpse of a wild world that has somehow survived so we can pretend for a moment that future co-existence is possible – though strictly, it has to be said, on our terms. The birds will be staying in the remote and mountainous and chilly parts like here in Foveaux Strait. We won’t be giving up the warmer, flatter, nicer and more fertile bits.

There’s a hierarchy of birds to be seen. At its apex, inevitably and permanently, the bird whose identity we’ve stolen as surely as its habitat. The kiwi is effortlessly number one on the visitor attraction list and therefore by the laws of economics the most costly to track down. Two hundred bucks will put you on a guided tour that leaves at dusk by ferry for some remote and bush-lined beach where kiwi come to hunt the sand-hoppers. A glimpse is guaranteed or half your money back.

But, confided my motelier, kiwi have also been known to potter from the bush at night and forage – you won’t be telling anyone else now, will you? – on the fringes of the Oban township rugby pitch. So last night after dinner in the one hotel – a plate of splendid deep fried cod of course, and a bottle of shiraz to warm my inner man – I headed up the hill towards the rugby field. Dank bush and baches. I panted with the steepness.

My eyes, accustomed to the gloom, made out the tops of the rugby posts against the stream of grey-black cloud that swept across the stars. The paddock had been carved from the bush. An over-zealous kick for touch would be lost among the ponga and the supplejack. What to do now? I didn’t know. I briefly swung a beam of torch light along the edge of the bush. Nothing. Then over by the 22 a similar sweep of torch light. And then another from beyond the goalposts. It seems we’d got the place surrounded. I went back to the bar.

The boatman on the Ulva Island ferry has a sea-spray face and a practised line in patter. ‘‘If you have seeds or rats on you,’’ he says, ‘‘it’s time to ditch them now.’’ For Ulva island is Eden – predatorless and us-less. It is how these islands would have been if we’d never dragged our waka and our out-sized cerebellums up the beach.

Robins land at your feet. Tui chuckle, squawk and gurgle. Ka¯ ka¯ crash through the wet foliage. Yellowheads flit. Saddlebacks pick at the leaf-litter. And, on a little stretch of beach, a weka stalks me. I smash a mussel with a stone and lob it to the bird who seems to be expecting it. It’s got me tamed.

On the ferry back Mr Sea Salt cuts the engine and I look up to see a bird the size of a small aircraft. It leans and arcs against the wind and tilts a wing to clip the cresting waves, an albatross, a carver of the air, a wondergasp of casual aeronautics.

‘‘A mollyhawk,’’ says Captain Sea Salt, and then, as if aware that he has pricked a bubble, ‘‘it’s a sort of albatross.’’

On the way back to the motel I stop at the only store to buy almonds.