tewart Island is, however, probably best known for its muttonbirds. Walk out to Ackers Point in the summer evenings and the dozens of muttonbirds landing around you will give you a faint idea of what it must be like on the islands offshore, where the birds are in their tens of thousands. The 350 hectares of the Snares Group to the south of Stewart Island is home to an estimated 8,000,000 muttonbirds and many of the smaller islands off Stewart Island once had correspondingly dense populations. When birds in these numbers are landing the din is indescribable. Guthrie-Smith has left us a delightful description of this:

I turned in, and for a long time lay ruminating over the marvels of the evening flight, and listening to the night crammed with sound; at last, with the wail of innumeraable petrels in my ears, fell asleep to wake again at earliest dawn ... Something had stopped, it was the sound of silence again returned that had roused me. The growing light had drawn the petrels down their flapped and wing-beaten paths; to the very edge of the cliffs had flowed their fluttering streams, runnels like those that never reach the earth, spilling themselves from the mountain heights of our southern sounds. The dawn had called like God; at its bidding each tenant had stepped from his dark tomb. It was the morning of the Resurrection. No wood birds sang, a silence had fallen on the earth blank as that of an extinguished star. In the chill of the morn and after the night of eager courtship a desolation brooded over the empty land, as when the Lord shall have called all living creatures to their last account, when wealth of leaf in spring and weight of autumn grain shall no more be known to the generations of man.

Who could ever call them muttonbirds again after reading this!

Many other seabirds can be seen around the island. Spotted shags, little shags and Stewart Island shags are all found here together with the blue shag which goes under the rather unusual local name of the bravo duck. They mostly nest on the smaller islands and stacks offshore and their nesting places are clearly visible under the white coating of guano which has usually killed all vegetation in the immediate area.

'Bravo duck' is not the only unusual local name I heard down here. Kaka are often referred to as kaki and a Scotsman I met called the giant petrels 'dirty Allans'. Best of all a Fijian friend always called the local albatross the 'wondering Albatross which conjured up pleasant pictures of the bird sitting on its nest looking pensive and perplexed.

Usually there are other seabirds, often gulls, nesting in association with the shags, even though their raucous calls and habit of regurgitating semi-digested fish would seem to make them not particularly desirable neighbours. I borrowed a boat and spent a most enjoyable afternoon watching the comings and goings at a pied shag rookery, or shaggery as they are sometimes called. As each parent arrived, its chick would make an appalling din, wailing peevishly until the adult opened its beak. The chick thereupon plunged its head down the parent bird's throat for the fish inside and upon finishing it sat there crying piteously for more. Eventually tried beyond endurance, the adult shut the brat up simply by sitting on top of him.

Penguins abound here, and on virtually any boat trip you will see little blue penguins diving as the boat approaches and then surfacing again some distance away. Fiordland crested penguins are here too with a few yelloweyed penguins, but unlike the little blue most of these nest on the smaller offshore islands. As settlement has increased around Halfmoon Bay, the little blues that once nested here have moved to less frequented areas. A number nest at Dead Man’s Beach and I made several trips there to watch them wandering nonchalantly out of the tide in the evening. On the return trip to Halfmoon Bay bats were always to be seen, a rare sight in the north, and moreporks were calling everywhere, their calls mingling with those of the seabirds passing overhead.

When last here I was fortunate in being able to make a couple of day trips out of Halfmoon Bay with a local fisherman, and so was able to see a number of seabirds which normally keep some distance offshore. As soon as we cleared Ackers Point a line of red-billed gulls alighted on the stem of the boat with all the self-assured aplomb of regular travellers and remained with us for most of the day. Although among the most common of our seabirds, they are among the most attractive, with their neat grey and white attire nicely set off by scarlet beaks and feet.