Two in the Bush (Bello)

by Gerald Durrell

  As we took our reluctant leave of the chicks and made our way down the path, we saw one of the parent birds, far out on the horizon, floating like a black and white cross over the grey sea, swooping and gliding on the air currents as smoothly as a stone skims on ice, with never a single wing-beat, just a gentle inclination of the body to make the best use of whatever air current happened to catch the broad wings. We stood and watched this effortless flight until the bird was so far away that it was out of range of even our binoculars, and then, saluting the chicks once more, we left the sanctuary.

  Next we drove down the coast of the peninsula to a place that Stan said was one of the favourite breeding grounds for the yellow-eyed penguin. This is one of the most beautiful of the penguin family and at one time was quite common along certain areas of suitable coast, but, wherever man appeared, the penguin suffered. Yellow‑eyes like to nest inland, in the forest or scrub, the nest being placed under the shelter of a log or some rocks and consisting of a comfortable platform of twigs and coarse grass. But the human beings cut down the forest and scrub to make grassland for their precious sheep, depriving the penguin in many places of its natural nesting habitat, and so it started to decline. Add to this that the farmers and other people would raid the nests, break the eggs and kill the defenseless parent birds, and you have, in miniature the sort of thing that is happening all over the world to hundreds of harmless species of birds, mammals and reptiles. The area that Stan took us to was a large sheep farm, one of whose borders was formed by the high cliffs of the peninsula, but in this particular area there were many valleys sloping down to the beach, valleys thickly covered with just the sort of scrub that the penguins liked to nest in. The farmer (who must surely be one of the most enlightened in New Zealand) had agreed that these valleys should remain untouched so that they formed a sanctuary for the birds and had agreed too – since he was on the spot – to be acting, unpaid warden of the area. Before this sensible and humane gesture was made the yellow-eye population had dropped alarmingly to only a few hundred birds; after a few years of this protection the population had crept up and now numbered a couple of thousand. Stan was a bit worried that we might not see any of the birds, since the breeding season was over and the yellow-eyes spent most of their time out at sea, fishing, but we made our way down one of the valleys and eventually found ourselves on a great stretch of beach, liberally sprinkled with sea-smoothed rocks draped in shawls of green seaweed. We picked our way through the boulders, keeping a sharp lookout both up the valleys and out to sea, for we had no means of knowing where the penguins would be. Half an hour passed and we had seen nothing except a few gulls and cormorants flying past, and I began to think that, for the first time in New Zealand, we were going to be unlucky in our search for something we wanted to film. Then Stan, standing up on a pinnacle of rock, suddenly pointed out to sea.

  ‘There’s one,’ he said triumphantly, ‘and he’s swimming inshore.’

  Brian and I hurriedly scrambled up the slippery slope of rock to join him.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Brian in a self-satisfied manner, ‘he should land about fifty yards from here.’

  I peered hopefully out to sea, but my eyes were no match for those of Brian and Stan, and until I used my binoculars I could not see a thing. Then all I could see was the head which, at that distance, looked like a small bundle of straw floating rapidly along the surface of the water towards the shore.

  We waited patiently on the rock until the penguin reached the shallow water and waddled ashore, as Brian had predicted, some fifty yards away from where we were. He trundled up the beach with that earnest, flat-footed air that penguins adopt and, acting on Sam’s advice, we let him get up to the top of the small cliff leading to the valley before trying to intercept him. When he had crossed the beach he reached the tumble of great rocks and smaller boulders that formed the small ‘cliff’ at the top of which the grass and bushes started and sloped gently upwards. Instead of picking his way through these rocks, as I imagined he would, he paused in front of the first one, gathered himself for the effort and then jumped on top of it, where he stood swaying in a triumphant but slightly intoxicated manner. Then he measured the distance between the rock he was standing on and the next one and leapt once again, landing on it more by good luck than good judgment. So he progressed from rock to rock in a series of wild leaps; occasionally he would misjudge the distance, land on the rock, stand swaying for a moment, his wings outstretched to try and keep his balance, and would then slide gracefully down the side of the rock and out of sight. Presently he would reappear, clambering manfully up on to the rocks again, to repeat the performance. Why he chose this complicated and exhausting method of obtaining his goal I have no idea, for by picking his way between the rocks he could have obtained his objective much more quickly and in an infinitely more dignified manner. He was by now sufficiently far from the sea that, even if he did notice us, he would not have time enough to escape, so I made my way to the top of the cliff and crawled through the undergrowth on all fours until I came to the spot where I thought he would finally appear. Here I lay down in the grass and endeavoured to look as much like a piece of vegetation as possible. I had calculated that he would reach the small cliff top some twenty feet from where I was lying.

  I was lying there, staring eagerly at the spot at which I thought he would appear, and making plans as to the best way to catch him so that we could take our close-up shots of him, when his head appeared over a tuft of grass some four feet away. I am not quite sure which one of us was the most surprised. The penguin glared at me in a disbelieving fashion and I gaped at him open-mouthed for, up until then, I had only seen him at a distance and I had not realised how attractive he would be. The feathers on the top of his head were bright yellow, each feather with a central black streak; a patch round his eye, which then formed a band right round the back of his head to the other eye, was a brilliant sulphur yellow; his beak was brownish with slate blue patches and his eyes were a pale lemon yellow. I lay as still as I could and hoped that he would mistake me for a rock or a bush, although I felt the chances were slight. However, the yellow-eye stared at me for a time, obviously suspicious, twisting his head this way and that to see if I looked any different from different angles, and at length decided that I must be some curious sort of flotsam of a harmless nature. With one final effort he hauled himself over the rim of the cliff and stood there panting, flapping his wings up and down. I could see now that his back was a pale smoke blue and his flippers were blackish, neatly rimmed with yellow, while his shirt front gleamed a pure and unsullied white, so brilliant that it would have made a detergent manufacturer burst into tears of joy. His large, rather flat feet were pinkish, armed with exceptionally large brown claws, which I supposed he needed to help him in his perambulations up and down the cliff. After he had paused long enough to gain his breath, he turned round and started to waddle up the valley with an air of determination. I rose silently to my feet,overtook him in a couple of quick steps and grabbed. I was careful to get one hand round the back of his neck, for what I had seen of his beak led me to believe that it was not put there just for ornament. As I grabbed him he twisted his head round and stared up at me in horror, at the same time uttering a startled squawk. Talking to him soothingly, I bundled his fat body under my arm and then – still keeping a firm grip on his neck – made my way down to where the others were waiting for me on the beach. After my capture had been duly admired and all the still photographs we wanted of him taken, we then hoped we would get some co-operation from him in the filming. We had the shots of him coming out of the sea and some long shots of him climbing the cliff, but what we wanted now were some close-up shots of him boulder-hopping. To our complete surprise, he behaved perfectly. We put him down on the sand within a few feet of the tumble of boulders and he started off towards them determinedly. For five minutes or so we filmed him leaping from boulder to boulder with what he obviously imagined to be a chamois-like grace, occasionally tripping
and falling on his face or toppling over backwards and disappearing into a crevice with wild flapping of flippers. When we had all the material we wanted we decided that it would be a shame – after his original laborious ascent of the cliff – that he should have to do it all over again because of us, so I picked him up and carried him a fair distance up the valley in the direction in which he had been originally heading. I put him down on the grass and he looked up at me enquiringly; I patted his bottom encouragingly and he waddled a few uncertain paces forward and then looked back again, as if wondering whether it was worth going any further if I was going to chase and catch him again, but as I remained quite still he decided that perhaps now he was safe, and disappeared into the long undergrowth at a brisk trot, tripping daintily over the grass tussocks, and soon disappeared from sight. As I watched him go I wondered how anyone could be so callous as to kill these beautiful and harmless birds, or even rob their nesting sites, but at least there was one consolation: here, on this strip of wild coast with the gentle, tree-filled valleys running up from the sea, they were safe.

  We drove back into Dunedin, dropped Stan at his house, and then pointed the nose of the Land-Rover back the way we had come. Our destination was Picton, the port on the extreme tip of South Island, for it was from here that we were to take the trip out to the Brothers.

  The following morning we made our way down to the jetty in Picton and found the boat that was to take us to the Brothers. She was a small, rather raffish-looking launch, with a wheelhouse the size of a matchbox. Jim, festooned with equipment like a Christmas tree, gazed at it uneasily.

  ‘Are we going in that?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. What’s wrong with it? It’s a dear little boat,’ said Jacquie, and I saw the launch’s owner wince visibly.

  ‘But it’s so small,’ said Jim. ‘There are no cabins.’

  ‘We’ll only be on her for a few hours. What on earth do you want cabins for?’

  ‘You have to have somewhere to go if you feel sick,’ said Jim in a dignified tone.

  ‘You can be sick over the side,’ said Chris callously.

  ‘I like to be sick in private,’ said Jim.

  ‘Well, stick a coat over your head,’ said Chris.

  ‘Come along, come along, let’s get started,’ said Brian, rushing to and fro carrying things. We got the last of the equipment on and then scrambled aboard ourselves. The skipper of the launch cast off and started the engine and we set off down Queen Charlotte Sound, our dinghy bobbing and bouncing about in our wake like an excited puppy chasing its mother’s tail.

  The water of the Sound was as flat as a pale blue mirror, and reflected in it were the rolling, browny-green, rather desiccated-looking hills along each side. We crowded on to the tiny deck in the bows of our craft and lay basking in the thin sunshine, keeping a sharp look-out for birds. Here Brian came into his own, for his phenomenal eyesight enabled him to pick out and identify species long before we had our eyes attuned to the silky blue reflection of the water. Luckily, however, most of the bird life we saw was reasonably tame and allowed the boat to get quite close before scattering. The first, and by far the most common species we saw were the fluttering shearwaters, small, fragile-looking birds, blackish-brown in colour with white undercarriages and ashy grey marking on the head. They freckled the water in little clusters of four or five and would let us get to within about twenty feet of them before taking off and flying along the surface of the water with a rapid, rather twisting flight, their wings flapping rapidly in the characteristic shearwater flight that has given them their name. We were endeavouring to get some good cine shots of the fluttering shearwaters when Brian pointed out to me a mysterious round object floating on the surface of the water.

  ‘Penguin!’ he said succinctly.

  I stared at the rounded object incredulously; it bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to any bird species I had ever seen. Suddenly the ball swivelled round and I saw it had a beak attached to it. Sure enough, it was the head of a penguin, swimming along with the body completely submerged and only the head showing above the surface, like the periscope of a submarine. As the boat drew closer to it we could distinguish the body beneath the clear water and watch it as it propelled itself along with its flippers and feet. It was a species of penguin that I had always wanted to meet – the Cook Strait blue penguin, the smallest of this extraordinary family. Tubby little birds, they stand only sixteen inches high; their shirt fronts are an immaculate, shining, first-night white, and the rest of their plumage a beautiful deep blue, nicely set off by a neat white line down the outside of each flipper. The one we were following seemed more cautious than afraid, for he would let the boat come within twenty or thirty feet of him before suddenly submerging and zooming off like a torpedo, leaving a trail of silvery bubbles behind him. Then he would pop to the surface when he was well ahead, and float there, watching us with interest until the boat was nearly on top of him again. Presently he was joined by six or seven others, and they led us along like a guard of honour for several miles. They were enchanting little birds and the more we saw of them the more we grew to like them, although, as we were soon to learn, close proximity to them could be irritating.

  After chugging down the Sound for an hour or so, we rounded a headland and ahead of us could see the mouth of the Sound. Here we would be entering the open sea of Cook Strait. We could see that the water ahead was not the smooth, pale blue water of the Sound, but a deep, rich, peacock blue, flecked and striped with foam.

  ‘Looks as though it’s going to be a bit rough,’ shouted our skipper, cheerfully. Jim, who had been lying back with his eyes closed and a beatific smile on his face, sat up in alarm and looked ahead.

  ‘Cor, stone the crows,’ he said, ‘are we going out into that?’

  ‘What really worries me is that if it’s too rough we won’t be able to land on the White Rocks or the Brothers,’ said Brian.

  ‘It doesn’t worry me,’ said Jim, ‘not in the least. Let’s turn back and film some more penguins.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not too bad,’ said our skipper. At that moment we hit the demarcation line between the calm waters of the Sound and the boisterous waters of Cook Strait. The launch, like a skittish horse, immediately tried its best to stand on its head, and a vast quantity of spray was flung on to the deck where we were sitting. We rose in a body and struggled back to wedge ourselves in the tiny wheelhouse which at least gave us some protection.

  ‘We’re mad – stark staring mad,’ said Jim, desperately trying to keep his balance and mop seawater off the lens of his camera.

  ‘Just a bit of a blow,’ said the skipper amusedly, ‘but it might make it a bit tricky getting on to the White Rocks, that’s all.’

  ‘How do we get on there?’ asked Jim.

  ‘In the dinghy,’ replied the skipper.

  Jim glanced out over the stem and was treated to the sight of the tiny dinghy on the end of her rope completely disappearing behind a wave.

  ‘A bit tricky,’ said Jim thoughtfully. ‘That is one of the most masterly understatements I have ever heard.’

  Although to anyone used to small boats this sea was nothing, to anyone who suffered acutely from seasickness it must have seemed as though we were in the middle of a typhoon. However, I could quite see the skipper’s point of view that to get on to an almost sheer rock without adequate anchorage in a sea like this was going to be tricky. It was not long before we caught our first glimpse of the White Rocks through the salt-encrusted windows of the wheelhouse, and I began to realise how difficult the landing might be. It reared up out of the sea like a medium sized pyramid with a carunculated top. The upper surface of the rock was white with the droppings of generations of seabirds, and this gave it the appearance of a badly shaped and badly iced Christmas cake. The skipper edged the launch round to the seaward side of the rock, where there was a slight recess that could hardly be dignified with the term bay. Here he cut the engine down as much as possible and his second in command
pulled the dinghy alongside the wallowing, rolling launch. Getting from the launch into the dinghy in that sea was quite a feat in itself, but to do it while carrying heavy but delicate equipment required the agility of a gibbon, and I was sure at one point when Jim stumbled that he would pitch headfirst into the sea and sink from sight, pulled under by the weight of the stuff he was carrying. One by one, Chris, Jim, Brian and I were ferried across and landed on a beach the size of the average dining table at the base of the rock; with the four of us and the equipment on the beach, there was little room for anything else.

  As Brian explained to us, the nesting site of the king shags was on a small, flat area on the very crest of the White Rocks, and in order to get to it we would have to scale the cliff under which we now stood. Jim glanced at the almost vertical rock face and raised his eyes to heaven. Actually, the climb was not difficult, for the wind and rain had gouged and fretted the rock face to such an extent that there were a thousand hand and footholds. What made the climb at all dangerous was the composition of the White Rocks: the whole thing was as brittle and crumbly as sponge cake and you could literally break off great chunks of it with your bare hands, so every foothold and handhold had to be tested and double checked. Also, the wind had acted like a whetstone, sharpening every projection to a razor edge, and this was an added hazard. Laboriously we climbed up the cliff, and when we reached the top and peered over, the wind hit us with such force that it almost blew both us and the equipment into the sea. We were now clinging to the summit, some hundred and fifty feet above the sea. To our right a coffin-shaped slab of stone projected out over the waves, and to our left the fretted spine of the rock ran along for some two hundred feet and then petered out into a flattish area about fifty feet by twenty, and there was the colony of king shags. There were about twenty of them squatting on the rock among their nests, and as our heads appeared above the edge of the rock they all waddled to the edge and took off, sweeping and wheeling round us, showing on their backs as they flew two curious, circular white patches that looked like the headlights of a car. They flew round in ever increasing circles until the whole flock were mere pinpricks against the blue sky. Brian assured us that they would soon return, and so Jim, having sized up the photographic possibilities of the situation, insisted on crawling out and lying on the coffin-shaped projection to our right; this in spite of our protests, for the rock was so brittle that the whole chunk could have broken off under his weight and precipitated him a hundred and fifty feet to the sea below. This was typical of Jim: he spent most of his time trying to persuade you that he was the most arrant coward and yet, when he had a camera in his hands, he would take risks that would make your blood run cold. So we crouched there in the biting wind, endeavouring to look as much like part of the rock as possible, and waited for the king shags to return. While we waited, I trained my binoculars on to the nesting site and examined the nests. These were circular structures some two feet in diameter and about nine inches in height, made of a mixture of plants and seaweed cemented together with the birds’ excreta, and as they are added to each year some were considerably higher than others. The White Rocks are, of course, as bare of vegetation as a billiard ball, so the birds have to fly to other nearby islands to collect their nesting material. The list of plants used in this nest building reads like something out of Lewis Carroll: taupata twigs, scurvy grass and mesembryanthemum.