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No rats = impressive bird life

Never having seen parrots in the wild, we were both pretty floored by Ulva Island. Flightless wekas, which are the top predators on Ulva since it became rat-free in 1997, have no fear of humans and walked right up to us almost as soon as we landed. We saw two kakas (a kind of parrot), three parakeets, two oystercatchers, and more wekas than you could shake a stick at (not sure why you'd want to, though). We actually saw three baby wekas, and we also got our first glimpse of a little blue penguin -- unfortunately, it was a dead little blue penguin, being dragged along by a weka back to its nest for consumption. That was a bit gross (Matt thought it was pretty cool, but that's boys for you). The bush on the island was amazing, with a much wider variety of plant life than we've seen elsewhere in NZ (because of the lack of deer, possums and rats), and lots of rare plants. There was even one specimen of the rarest plant in the world -- according to our little Ulva Island booklet, there are only seven left in the world. But we searched all over the area it was supposed to be in, and couldn't find it anywhere. So maybe there are only six left in the world now.

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