Golden Kowhai and a Blood Red Moon: The Story of a Springtime Cruise
November 9, 2007
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

Massed golden kowhai blooms.

We slipped off our lines and popped out into the Bay of Islands from our Kerikeri River base to check up on the spring kowhai flowering on the western side of Opunga Cove. Nowhere else we know is there such an abundance of these golden blossoms in an easily accessible sheltered anchorage. They must have flowered a little earlier than usual this unseasonable year, for the yellow blaze was already fading.

Opunga Cove, western shore, yellow blaze fading.

Still, dozens of tuis were frolicking, chuckling, cawing, croaking and chiming, as is their habitual conversational style. The sound is a joyful daylong chorus. Drunk on nectar, they fly skyward in pairs, before plunging into the bush beneath. We have long marveled at the variety of their calls but only recently did we learn that this wide range is possible only because they have a double voice box.

Upside down tui emerging with a yellow forehead after sipping nectar from a kowhai bloom.

Iridescent tuis cling upside down to kowhai branches, poking their beaks upwards into the bell-like blooms to sip nectar, before emerging with yellow foreheads. To catch them at rest is difficult, for they seem to know when someone is watching - no matter how still and silent we may be. They slither round to the other side of a branch to hide, or take off in a swift, papery flight. Nevertheless, with patience, we managed a few photos. Their two white feather throat baubles seemed to us to be perkier, cheekier, larger than usual in this spring mating season, their blue and green iridescent metallic gleam more pronounced than ever over their basic brown and black undercoats.

A tui in all its iridescent splendor on another of its favorite sources of nectar, New Zealand Flax. (photo thanks to Margie Murray)

We spied four wood pigeons in the upper kowhai trees. Apparently they swallow whole blossoms by the beak-full. New leaves too. We are more familiar with seeing them gorging on guava berries in gardens, or puriri berries in the bush. Like stout nuns in full habit, they too are iconic Kiwi birds. Strangely enough, their heads seem far too small for their heavy bodies, and almost appear to swivel right around. Their ponderous flight sounds papery, surprisingly like that of the swift acrobatic tuis.

Wood pigeon on flax in another place and time. (Margie Murray)

So much were we enjoying ourselves, we stayed for the better part of a week anchored in the same spot, loath to leave even when the wind blew strongly from the sou'west. We chose not to head for Waipiro Bay where shelter is better for that wind direction. We simply led our anchor line to a stern cleat, allowing Magic Dragon to hang in there steady as a die, without our sometimes too-rambunctious dragon careering about, tugging at our 85-pound anchor. Most of that week, we were on our own. On the weekend, nine other boats shared the cove and half a dozen dolphins joined the crowd. The wind gusts got up briefly to 47 knots in the outer bay during the week we were hunkered down in there. Inside our enclosed cockpit in what we call the Crystal Palace, we were sheltered from wind and rain, a great ringside seat. Sunsets from this cove are often spectacular, an added attraction.

Sunset from Opunga Cove.

While we were in Opunga Cove, Michel spent several hours burning CDs from a friend's Maxtor hard drive - nine CDs in MP3 format equals forty-five hours of glorious music.

Maxtor.

Each day, weather permitting, we chose to go ashore for close tui viewing, then for walks along the curving beach at the head of the bay where ancient pohutukawa trees are so weighted with epiphytes that some of the trees are brought to their knees. The pohutukawa is known as The New Zealand Christmas Tree as its all-over scarlet pom poms usually appear just before Christmas. Like the kowhai tree, the pohutukawa does not mind having its feet in salt water - in fact they both seem to thrive on it.

Epiphytes so heavy they bring giant pohutukawa trees to their knees.

But the most spectacular show of all on our springtime cruise was the full lunar eclipse on the night of the full moon, called La Luna Rosa, or the Blood Moon. Through 'Le Carreau', the clear hatch in the main salon, or from the acrylic hatch above our bunk we could monitor its development, or we could view the eclipse from our Crystal Palace Observatory, but best of all was from deck level.

Lunar eclipse. (Photo supplied by Rowan Dixson)

We did not watch the eclipse for the entire four or five hours as some did. Instead we chose to set a timer to wake us so we could sample various stages along the way between sleeps. The earth's shadow moved across the face of the full moon, changing its colour to a burnished red, like a Japanese lantern, so that surrounding stars gleamed brighter than ever before. Then the yellow crescent of the globe emerged and grew, extinguishing the smaller stars. Clouds obscured our familiar man in the moon before he again sailed high above our anchorage.