North Island Fauna

As I've mentioned before, New Zealand has some really cool birds. One of our favorites is the Pukeko. I had seen them stuffed in museums, but I got to see them alive for the first time on this trip. They have orange beaks and blue and black feathers.


No landscape in New Zealand would be complete without some sheep, so here's our obligatory pretty sheep picture. We were surprised at how many fewer sheep we saw on the North Island than on the South Island. Perhaps we didn't go to the sheepiest parts. All over NZ sheep farmers are converting to dairy as prices for lamb and wool fall and as Asia develops a taste for cheese and other milk products.

We've had several enounters with whole flocks of sheep that farmers are moving from one field to another via a road, but this was our first encounter with a lone sheep in the road. We came around the corner pretty fast and saw this fellow. He moved off the road pretty quickly.

And this was our first encounter with a herd of cows in the road. You can't really tell from the picture that they were VERY close to the car.

We've gotten quite used to the red-billed seagulls that are common on the South Island. They are one of three species of gulls in NZ, the other two being the black-backed gull and the black-billed gull. Say those three bird names quickly! It was fun to see our familiar red-billed gulls on the North Island as well.

The statue below is the iconic statue of the town of Whakatane (pronounded FA-ka-tan-ee) which is on the Bay of Plenty, on the east coast southeast of Auckland. The girl has a gull on her head, as well as one standing beside her on the rock.