ven if you are only passing through Auckland, take the trouble to explore the offshore islands, where there can still be seen birds that have now largely disappeared elsewhere.

The saddleback is found on Tiritiri Matangi Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf

Check with the Department of Conservation, familiarly known as DOC, or Gulf Harbour Ferries and see if they have a trip going to Tiritiri Matangi, an island not far off Auckland's North Shore. This island was once farmland, but is in the process of being turned back into forest. Volunteer groups have so far planted over 300,000 native trees and eventually it is planned to have the entire island in forest once again. To those accustomed to the glorious mix and match of prime native forest, it is a little unusual to see such regimented planting of native trees. Still, given time, this look will disappear; already a number of native birds including kakariki (parrot), whiteheads and tieke (saddleback) have been successfully introduced to Tiritiri Matangi along with stitchbirds, robin, takahe, the little spotted kiwi and most recently kokako.

This is probably the only place where you can now conveniently see the tieke in the wild. It moves through the bush with a rapid, almost frenetic motion, seldom pausing in its search for food. Ornithologist Dr Waiter Oliver described the related South Island species as:

... a noisy, active bird progressing by what may be described as long hops or short flights. It appears on the scene to the accompaniment of its shrill notes, moves restlessly about for a few moments and disappears as quickly as it came.

Anyone watching the tieke for any length of time would probably think it too quick for any predator to catch, but its roosting and nesting habits were its undoing. It spends the night on low perches on or near ground level and nests in holes easily accessible to foraging rats. DOC workers .have been trying to condition it to use nestboxes, but it is a little optimistic to try and cram a few million years of evolution into a couple of lifetimes. It will be interesting to see what association the tieke will eventually form with the whitehead (popokatea), on Tiritiri, as early observers noted that the foraging flocks of whitehead were accompanied by a pair of tieke which acted as guardians of sorts - indeed, they are said to take their name from ‘tiaki’, the Maori name for guardian.

Another island worth visiting is Great Barrier. Called Aotea (the long, white cloud) by the Maori, the island was home to kokako, brown teal and kiwi although it seems that the kokako and kiwi have now gone. The island was once covered in extensive stands of kauri, but only an area of about 40 hectares near the summit of Mt Hobson remains. The largest sawmill in the Southern Hemisphere operated from the Barrier and logs were floated in for milling from the Coromandel and even from the Bay of Islands. Today the only remnant of the mill’s activities are kauri wharf pilings. After the years of logging, manuka and kanuka grew over most of the island but since 1955 the Forest Service has removed unwanted trees to allow for the regrowth of natives.

Whaling, too, figured prominently in the island's early Pakeha history. Because of its position along a migration route, whales were easily caught by motorised catchers which operated from the Barrier until the nnd-1950s, concentrating on the migrating pods of humpbacks and Bryde's whales. Being close to major migration routes has also meant that the Barrier was a fairly common point for whale strandings. In fact, our largest recorded whale stranding, that of 450 pilot whales, took place at Dawa Bay, on the Barrier, in 1985.

Much closer to Auckland and a short ferry ride from the city is Rangitoto. Formed by a volcanic eruption which started about 600 years ago, Rangitoto is today covered with regenerating pohutukawa, together with mapou, mahoe, puriri and kohekohe, along with over 40 species of fem. Also on Rangitoto are quite extensive stands of rata, some of which have hybridised with the pohutukawa much to the fascination of botanists. Possums and wallabies once occurred here in large numbers, inflicting great damage on the vegetation, but have now been eradicated. The birdlife of the bush is not very varied, consisting mainly of exotics together with a few native species such as grey warblers and white-eyes, but there is an extensive colony of black-backed gulls, and blue penguins as well as some shags also nest along the shore.

The jewel of the islands, in conservation terms, is undoubtedly Little Barrier. Called Hauturu by the Maori, it was occupied at the time of Pakeha settlement by a few members of the Ngatiwai people. After the island was gazetted by the government as a sanctuary, the few Maori still living on Hauturu were evicted in what can only be described as a very shabby manner. Here alone, however, the stitchbird survived, despite strenuous efforts by introduced cats and bird collectors such as Andreas Reischek to exterminate it. Reischek visited the island in 1882 and collected some 150 stitchbirds knowing that they had already disappeared from the mainland. Cook’s petrels and black petrels also breed here, but their numbers were severely depleted by feral cats and it is only since these animals were finally exterminated in 1980 that the birds have been able to make a comeback.

The removal of cats has also allowed a number of other birds to be released on the island. The first of these liberations was that of the kokako in 1981, and this was followed by kakapo in 1982 and saddleback in 1984. The saddleback and kokako have both bred here and their prospects for long term survival look good. Unfortunately, this is not so with the kakapo, which has never bred well since its introduction, and there are discussions on moving these birds once again to an island which more closely meets their requirements, although the options are severely limited.