whirlibirds

Hello from a slightly damp Franz Josef, Fogg and I are on the move again today but wanted to share with our readers 2 wonderful experiences that we have had in the past few days. We firstly visited the Whataroa White Heron Sanctuary which was just up the road from where we staying. After a short mini bus ride we hopped onto a jet boat for a very exhilerating ride to the hide from which we could view white herons and Royal spoonbills. To get to the hide we had a 500m walk on a boardwalk through native rainforest. Absolutely wonderful, tall white pine trees dominated but there were others and tree ferns. Also these beautiful tree orchids just coming into flower. The hide gave wonderful views of the herons who only ever nest on this particular bend on this particular river and nowhere else in New Zealand. In with them were Royal spoonbills and little shags. It was brilliant to be able to watch these wonderful birds and they did not seem at all bothered by our presence. They were all coming to the end of their breeding seasons and the young herons were practising their flying skills.

All in all a brilliant experience which also gave us a brief glimpse of some of this regions wonderful wood strewn beaches. We visited another one at Okarito which despite the sandflies is one of the most beautiful beaches that we have seen. The title of this post does not refer totally to real birds but to 2 new fliers P and F and I will leave Fogg to tell you all about this.

Best wishes
Phileas

Hi Fogg here.

What Phileas is referring to is our Helicopter flight! It has rained a great deal here and that combined with low clouds means that the helicopters do not fly so we woke on Tuesday morning hoping for clear skies and no rain. We are again very lucky people as this is just how it turned out to be. To Franz Josef to pick up our small ( six seater ) copter. We were both apprehensive but as soon as we took off and left ourselves in the capable hands of Jules,our pilot, all fears were dispersed. It is difficult to describe this experience. We flew over the Franz Josef glacier which is massive and very deep, about 30 metres with huge chasms in the surface. It advances and retreats which it has done over many thousands of years. It eminates from the neve, which is the collecting point for the snow high in the mountains where the snow gets compacted and then travels slowly downhill. It is strange to see a glacier from high up with rain forests below in high temperatures all near the sea, but the glacier never gets there. We set down on the neve and left the copter to take photos and play ice balls ( carefully!) It was just the most truly awesome moments of our trip so far. Expensive, but worth it. Back on the copter we flew round Mount Tasman and Mount Cook and marvelled at the scenery. We then flew down the Fox glacier back to Franz.It was a small 'mosquito' type helicopter and it was very manouverable and we flew very close to the mountain sides. Also large windows which gave us sideways as well as downwards views. All in all absolutely wonderful. I wanted to stay up there. Our travelling companions were from Australia and obviously felt the same. Phileas has just reminded me that we in fact flew through the mountains first and then set down (whatever!)

I am sure that Phileas would like to add her bit here, but I would just like to add to her comments about Spoonbills. The adults have feathers on their heads which to me are very similar to the rota blades on our helicopter so 'Whirlibirds' refers to them both!

So back to Phileas, and this is Fogg signing off with very best wishes to you all.

Nothing else from me except to say that it doesn't matter which way round it was, it was awesome and also very moving and those who know me well will know how I reacted!!

On a lighter note I must put on record how ingenious the NZ people are. We are using the internet in a converted red bus, sitting on reclaimed coach seats!

Phileas