Meeting the great white whale

Ok, it was dark grey actually, but I couldn't pass on the allusion to Moby Dick. That's right folks, I was on the trail of sperm whales today. The day dawned bright, so the whale watching tour went ahead. There was a metre swell and a sea sickness warning. I am phobic about boats at the best of times, but this made me panic even more. We bought travel sickness tablets and duly took them, but I was in bits. As we travelled in bus to the wharf, I imagined having to jump from the harbour onto a wildly pitching boat. What's the worst that can happen? I asked myself. So, I fall in and get wet and can't swim and potentially drown - so what? I was greatly relieved when we arrived at the boat and saw it was in a nice calm dock with a really steady level gangplank and no jumping was required. I was even more relieved when I saw we had seats in a cabin and weren't required to hang on for dear life as the sea spray threatened to tear us from our seats. The journey out to the first whale, about 6 nautical miles, was quite rough with lots of bumps and spray flying past the cabin window. I tried not to think about being out at water - another phobia of mine - but told myself I was on a bus hurtling over the back roads of county louth - possibly the Ardee Road. That's really bumpy. After a while we arrived at the first whale, a young male named Big Nick (so called because he had a big nick out of his dorsal fin). I was hesitant at first to leave the cabin because of the motion of the boat (thought I would fall over board or pitch my camera into the ocean, and we were over a 1000 metre canyon) but my desire to see the whale over came my trepidation. Big Nick sat on the surface for a few minutes, gulping in lungfuls of air, and then dived down to feed, showing off with a nice sweep of his tail. We headed off to another whale, but arrived just as he dived, so back to Big Nick who resurfaced after about 20 minutes of feeding. These whales, the fourth largest whale in the world, can dive for anything up to an hour and over depths of 1000 metres. They are toothed whales, unlike the larger baleen whales - humpback, blue - and eat fish and squid, which they swallow whole. Ascetically I prefer the sleeker lines of the humpback, but the sperm whale is fascinating in its own way. Big Nick idled on the surface, replenishing his reserves or oxygen for a while, and I really got a feel for his size in the water, it was amazing. Then he dived again. We headed home after that and met up with a very large gathering of dusky dolphin. I think they were feeding because there must have been easily 50 dolphin and there were loads of sea birds as well. The dolphins swam under the boat, slapped the water with their heads and tails, leaped into the air and performed somersaults and generally cavorted gracefully all about us. I videoed the spectacle with my camera but it didn't do it justice. The sight alone was worth going to New Zealand. I often dream of seascapes teeming with life (they are usually scary dreams) and it was just like one of those dreams, except not scary. What made the trip even better was sighting a Wandering Albatross flying past the boat. I've seen them on TV with David Attenborough, but nothing compares to seeing them in real life. They are BIG birds, really really beautiful and majestic and BIG. I also saw giant shearwaters, another big bird, lots of different type of petrol, tern and I think skua, but I'm not sure. I tried to video the birds, but they were really hard to catch on camera. On the way back to the bus we saw a pied shag drying his wings on a rock (think of one of our shags, but with a white chest)

This afternoon we went for a bird watching walk in the forest. Our guide, Barry, was really nice. He told us that New Zealand native birds have no fear of people, which is amazing. We heard more birds than we saw, but after tramping for a while a couple of robins (a female and fledgling) popped down and scampered around our feet looking for grubs. They look bigger and rounder than our robins, with black plumage and white chests. Walking on we saw bellbirds (a little like reed bunting) fan tails (a bit like the pied wagtail but with a fanned tail), the brown creeper (wren like) and the green warbler (warbler like). In Barry's garden we saw some NZ Pigeons which are about the size of our wood pigeons and sound the same when they fly, but are really deep blue with white chests. We also saw magpie (NZ variety), thrush (introduced), starling (introduced) and Black Backed Gull. It was a good walk and the birds were interesting. It was nice to see them in their natural habitat. We also saw some interesting plants, which I can't remember the names of unfortunately.