Wildlife & Birds of New Zealand

This is a guest post by Vanya.

New Zealand is well known for adventure holidays and activities such as white water rafting and bungee jumping, but there’s a lot of incredible wildlife to be seen here too.

Zelandia and The Karori Sanctuary

Zelandia was one of the earliest sanctuaries set up in New Zealand and is a 225 hectare haven for wildlife set around a disused Victorian reservoir in Karori. Many of the birds living here are defenceless against introduced predators so this sort of reserve is very necessary to them. Here you can see Nectar eating Tui and Bell birds, as well as the Kaka a large endemic parrot, and of course these birds don’t always stick to the boundaries of the reserve ranging out into people’s gardens locally too.

Swimming with Hector’s Dolphins

Hector’s Dolphins are the world’s smallest dolphins with the adults being little more than a metre long. There are only a few thousand of them left making them very endangered. At Akora a small settlement near Christchurch, you can hand over a few dollars and cruise out into the harbour mouth where you can see and possibly even swim with them.

Ulva Island & the Kakapo

The Kakapo is a flightless bird which is the worlds largest and rarest parrot. It almost became extinct and in 1995 there were just 51 of them left. A successful breeding programme has however more than doubled the population and the remaining birds all live on a couple of tiny protected islands. Every October however, the Kakapo is brought to Ulva island where visitors can meet this fearless and funny bird face to face.

Penguin watching on the Catlins Coast

The southerly coast of the south island may be a little slim on creature comforts and it only got asphalt on the road here a couple of years ago, but it is the perfect place to go if you want to see penguins. There are two types here, cute little blue penguins and larger yellow eyed ones. Both can be seen in late afternoon waddling ashore for the night. Other places locally you can see fur seals, elephant seals and Hector’s Dolphins.

Kiwis in the Kauri

The New Zealand national bird is of course the Kiwi. However in it’s natural environment this small flightless bird is quite rare, and many New Zealanders have never seen one in the wild even if they’ve heard the distinctive kee-wee call carrying on the night air. In the northlands Trounson Kauri Park however, you may get a chance to see them and night time kiwi spotting walks take place here with a high success rate.

Getting to these locations means either getting a flight to Auckland or Christchurch and hiring a car.

About the Author:

Vanya is a travel enthusiast and backpacker at heart. Having spent 2 years travelling round the world she now lives in London where she lives with her two cats.

Images 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 from Flickr’s Creative Commons.