Stewart Island represents the southernmost point of our journey and is perhaps the only place in New Zealand where kiwis outnumber people. The only real community on the island is Oban, on Half Moon Bay, which has about 390 citizens. David and I did not actually land on Stewart Island, because 1) the port is a tender port, and 2) we had booked an excursion on Ulva Island, a small island near Stewart Island that is designated as a nature preserve "free sanctuary" (a formal designation for a site where visitors can see native birds at close range). Our tender went directly to Ulva Island and returned us directly to the ship at the end of our nature walk. The ship spent so little time at Stewart Island (only 8 hours) that there wasn't time to tender into Oban and do anything afterwards.

The island isn’t entirely a nature preserve – apparently a private family has owned a vacation home on the island for over 50 years, and they have an agreement with the government that allows them to keep and use their family compound; in return, they help maintain the island . There is a problem with predators (rats and skinks and other such varmints); there was a major eradication program that got rid of nearly all of them, but the naturalist explained that there had been a resurgence of rats in the last couple of years and showed us the baits that they are using to try to kill them off. They have to be specially designed so that only the rats that are the target can get to the baits; they don’t want to poison the birds they are trying to protect.

We got some good pictures of a few unusual birds: a Stewart Island weka, Stewart Island robins, a South Island kaka, and a South Island Saddleback. The first two species are very tame and friendly, but the latter two are more shy and harder to photograph. One member of our party managed to get a picture of (the butt end of) a kiwi as it ran away into the woods; unfortunately, most of us didn’t even see it. I got a picture of a bird that I can’t remember what it is (some kind of parrot I think) that was very shy. I also got a picture of what I think is a white-fronted tern on the seashore.

It was at Stewart Island that I realized we had just encountered two pretty new (to me) concepts: the further south you go, the colder it gets; and the really cold winds come from the south (off Antarctica). As we leave Stewart Island tonight and turn north again, it will begin to get warmer, instead of the approximately 50 degrees it was today.