Page 34 - 2008 NZ SUB ANTARCTIC ISLANDS - SMARTPHONE

the island. Everyone was smiling in eager anticipation and no one gave way to anxiety or white
knuckling—at least not in our Zodiac. And what magic awaited us there!

First treat of all was our enthusiastic and almost proprietary guide whose name was the same as
the island—Ulva. She told us with no less pride that she was part Maori, part Scotch and even
had some USA heritage in her past! She is also so proud of what she and the other participants
have been able to achieve on Ulva Island. No wonder she feels such a sense of happy
ownership—with its combination of protectiveness and a wish to share the beauties of the place.

She reported to us that the constant vigilance practiced by the docents and scientists has kept the
island completely pest free. The native birds are rebounding and thriving. She took such delight
in every birdsong she heard and interpreted its species for us. And the native birds are not the
only living things that are flourishing on Ulva—the orchids, the mosses, ferns, totaro trees (a
stout and tall tree almost lost to European ship-building practices in many parts of New Zealand),
ratas (seen in much greater profusion by us on Enderby), rimu trees with their flamboyant red
blossoms, lancewood (described at Jacob’s Bay), and miro trees with their amazingly patterned
bark. Ulva reveled in pointed out every smallest little flower and every enormous tree as if they
were her own, as indeed they were in a certain sense.

Among the bird species we saw happily making their homes in this haven were weka (rather like
a chicken but we don’t know if it also tastes like one), kaka (the gaudy parrot),
saddlebacks (at one time reduced to only 30 birds in all New Zealand and here in Ulva alone they
have 30 pairs breeding), fantails (another tiny bird almost lost to NZ—it has the most amazing
tail feathers which spread like a lady’s fan with stripes of white and black), brown creepers (they
are like our sapsuckers and can up & down tree trunks backwards and forwards), tui ( a lovely
black bird with

vivacious yellow feathers about its face—itself almost extinct on the two mainland islands), and
finally the fabled rifleman (NZ’s tiniest bird, so small that its nest cavity is just a narrow slit in a
tree truck and whose chicks are no larger than bumblebees). We didn’t see the babies of the pair
of rifleman we were lucky enough to observe, but we did see the daredevil approach of the parent
birds to the almost invisible slit in the tree where they folded their wings without a pause and
disappeared inside! Quite a show!

During our hour and a half visit to this special place, we had alternate rain and sunshine, but we
delighted in it all. The thoughtful conservators of Ulva Island have put down gravel paths so
there is no slippery mud to contend with and they have bridged all the little streamlets with non-

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