New Zealand - wildlife

New Zealand Wildlife

For a variety of reasons, I expected to see a lot more unusual wildlife as we toured New Zealand. And while New Zealand does host a great number of indigenous species such as the k iwi bird and the glowworm, what one sees most is not too unlike what one might see in rural America. Above, a herd of dairy cattle have spaced themselves out to graze and rest in a large open field.


	The Red-billed Gull often made for great photographs. They allowed people to get closer to them than most birds might..

Although the Red-billed Gull is a native of New Zealand, it resembles most any sort of familiar gull to me. They seemed to be as populated and perhaps pesky at times as the pigeon is in many United States cities.

The Peacock above and the Emu at right were

both in a fenced area at one of our rest stops.

Unfortunately, I was never able to get a clear photograph of the Kea shown at left. This little guy is known as the Alpine Parrot. He approached our coach just as we were preparing to leave a rest stop.

The Elk shown at left and above were in an enclosure at a rest stop near the Moeraki Boulders. They didn't seem to mind attention.

New Zealand is well known for it's wool industry and there are countless pastures filled with sheep. It was difficult to photograph examples of the lush rolling green pastures saturated with the wool bearing creatures. A camera requires at least a moment to focus and aim and there's an added complexity when shooting from from a moving crowded coach with windows that bounce light in distracting ways. In addition, our stops were rarely made near a sheep infested field and sheep tend to get spooked easily when someone gets close. I did manage to get a few acceptable photographs represented by the ones above, at left and below.

A lesser known industry in New Zealand is the deer industry. In some areas of New Zealand, we saw as many deer grazing in large fields as we might see cattle or sheep. This was an unusual sight for Americans who normally might only see deer in the wild and enjoy venison after a successful hunt.

We saw a fair share of duck along the way. The one at left seems to be posing in hopes to obtain some handout as a reward.

What we did not see of note is an assortment of exotic looking tropical birds such as we have in Florida. We also didn't see Koala Bears or Kangaroos.

Examples of other creatures we encountered may be found in other topic areas of this Web site.

Click for more wildlife images at Rainbow Springs.