Third time lucky? Not likely! The latest rock wren photography mission proved to be the hardest yet and there was no sign of wren at all. My first two missions were to Lake Henderson where a rock wren monitoring programme has been in place for almost 20 years. Only earlier this year (after two trips) did I find out that stoats have reduced rock wren numbers down to 1 individual in the Lake Henderson basin. Although that info would have been useful before I planned a trip up there it at least made me feel better about not finding any wren.
The latest trip started with a tip from my mate Gordon, he’d been walking from Fenella Hut to Kakapo Peak when he saw a pair of wren on an outcrop. I figured that was about as easy as it was going to get to see a wren in Kahurangi so I watched the weather and planned a trip.
I had a super fast trip up to Fenella Hut on Friday night after work arriving just on dusk. Normally the hut is jam packed with trampers but as luck would have it I had the hut all to myself.
On Saturday I got up at 6am and started making my way towards Kakapo Peak looking for a pair of rock wren Gordon saw a few weeks ago. At the point where you cross over watersheds I spotted a goat and managed to have a 10 minute bleating contest with it – If only I had a gun with me!
Arriving at the location a huge search ensued with me playing rock wren calls, lots of looking and listening but no luck. After a quick lunch back at the hut I made my way back down to Trilobite Hut.
As I was eating my sausages and salsa (wicked combo) in the hut a korean gentleman showed up with a knife in his hand asking if he could stay in the hut. With a knife in your hand you can pretty much do whatever you want I reckon (although I did have a pan full of hot sausages and oil to fight him off with). Anyways turns out he’d biked all the way in with broken brakes and was a bit freaked out with very little english language and no cell phone reception. He got even more freaked out when Jana, Kata and co arrived with beer, marshmellows and sausages.
On Sunday morning we all made our way up to Peel Ridge and were lucky enough to have a pair of Kaka pay us a visit about half way up – pretty awesome to see them in the wild just feeding and hanging out. Such a wicked weekend in the mountains even without Rock Wren.
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