|
Do you enjoy the 100% volunteer, not for profit services of TheOneRing.net? Consider a donation!
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Roheryn
Gondor
Feb 19 2007, 8:54am
Views: 385
Shortcut
|
|
A night with a kiwi!
|
Can't Post
|
|
The *bird*, that is. I've seen my first one in the wild!
Imagine this: a moonless, cloudless night under a sky so packed with stars that you could almost navigate by them. (This is how the skies in Middle-earth must have been: completely untarnished by any human-generated light. You can only see stars like this in the remotest of places now.) Granted, the stars are strange and some are upside-down (at least to those of us used to the Northern Hemisphere!), but that only adds to the magic. You’re far removed from civilization: the nearest village (of 380 people) is a 35-minute boat ride away. You’re standing on a flat sandy beach, with waves gently crashing behind you in that incessant rhythm of the sea. The beach curves off in the distance to either side of you, ending abruptly at the edge of shapeless dark hills covered (though you can’t quite make it out) in windswept native bush. The beach stretches ahead of you to the edge of the bush -- really a forest -- though it looks like little more than a wall of black in the darkness. Halfway between you and the bush’s edge, caught in the beam of a dim flashlight, forages the prize of the evening: a wild kiwi. You sit down on the wet sandy beach to watch it better through your binoculars. The kiwi repeatedly pokes its long beak into the sand, searching for insects, quickly gobbling any it finds. In its enthusiasm it sometimes pokes its whole head into the sand, past its eyes, shaking sand off its face once it emerges. It seems oblivious to your presence, poking and probing and prodding and scratching its neck in a manner suggesting that you’re not more than a rather solidified wave. You watch for some 20 minutes, when suddenly the kiwi turns and bolts over the rise of sand into the bush and is gone.
What an experience!
|
|
Attachments:
|
kiwi-tokoeka.jpg
(10.1 KB)
|
|
|
|
Subject
|
User
|
Time
|
A night with a kiwi!
|
Roheryn
|
Feb 19 2007, 8:54am
|
How neat is that! (n/t)
|
Alcarcalime
|
Feb 19 2007, 11:06am
|
|
Brava! And welcome {[Ro}}
|
Altaira
|
Feb 19 2007, 2:06pm
|
|
a once in a lifetime experience, lucky you! (nt)
|
Ciars
|
Feb 19 2007, 3:46pm
|
|
That's awesome!
|
Auxerre
|
Feb 19 2007, 3:59pm
|
|
Beautiful post!
|
Morwen
|
Feb 19 2007, 5:11pm
|
|
Thanks!
|
Roheryn
|
Feb 19 2007, 6:49pm
|
|
Wow!
|
deej
|
Feb 19 2007, 5:17pm
|
|
Where did you see it Ro?
|
Ataahua
|
Feb 19 2007, 5:50pm
|
|
On Stewart Island, actually.
|
Roheryn
|
Feb 19 2007, 6:43pm
|
|
Would you mind
|
Ataahua
|
Feb 19 2007, 6:47pm
|
|
Excellent!
|
Kimi
|
Feb 19 2007, 7:24pm
|
|
my weekend bird encounter
|
Wynnie
|
Feb 20 2007, 3:49am
|
|
a rarity where i am...(a few years ago)...
|
elvenhobbit
|
Feb 20 2007, 12:11pm
|
|
Great story! And, not that I'm not glad to see you
|
entmaiden
|
Feb 20 2007, 5:25am
|
|
Wow! What a special event! (nt)
|
dernwyn
|
Feb 21 2007, 3:47pm
|
|
|
|
