Birding down under
Of the six remaining penguin species on my list, four of them could only be found on New Zealand and Australia’s Subantarctic Islands. Whereas dozens of cruise operators shuttle guests to and from the Antarctic Peninsula, far fewer expedition companies visit the “Subs,” as the islands are called. In fact, only Heritage Expeditions visits all six island subgroups: the Snares, the Auckland Islands, Campbell Island, the Antipodes, and the Bounty Islands, all administered by New Zealand, plus Australia’s Macquarie.
While Heritage operates various itineraries in the Subs, one in particular caught my attention: Birding Down Under, the most comprehensive itinerary that even included the more northern Chatham Islands. I correctly assumed that a birding-focused cruise would provide ample opportunities to see not only my four remaining penguin species, but also all sorts of seabirds, including up to 11 species of my spark bird, the albatrosses. I packed up my binoculars and returned to New Zealand.
Departing from Bluff, we sailed south overnight to the Snares. The cliff-lined North East Island might not be conducive to human landings, but it’s a perfectly suitable home for the resident Snares crested penguins. Though spicy seas prevented us from getting close to the island in Zodiacs, it didn’t matter all that much for penguin sightings—rafts of penguins swam right up to our ship.
Another overnight leg brought us to Enderby Island, part of the Auckland Islands. To my surprise, yellow-eyed penguins were everywhere. Far less skittish than their mainland brethren, these birds marched between the sea and their forested nests on penguin highways that crossed our hiking trail. As I made my way through the tree line of the rata forest, a penguin emerged from its nest not more than a few feet away from me, giving me a far closer look than my previous sightings.
The weather gods then blessed us with unbelievably good conditions at Macquarie, providing us with two full days of penguin encounters. Macca is almost like a miniature version of South Georgia, with an estimated population of some four million penguins between kings, royals, and my 16th species, the eastern rockhopper. But here, I fell in love with not only the birds, but also the juvenile elephant seals called “weaners,” as they had just been weaned from their mothers. These sausage-like babies up to us without fear, nudging our knees and imploring us with their big puppy-dog eyes.
On Campbell Island, I delighted in the soft peeps of the Campbell teal, a flightless duck, as well as courtship dances of the majestic southern royal albatross. And that’s not to mention the absolutely breathtaking megaherbs, giant wildflowers only found in the Subs, that blanketed the landscape like the garden of an alien world.
By the time I spotted the erect-crested penguin—my last penguin lifer of the trip and 17th species overall—on the rocky shore of the Antipodes, it wasn’t only the penguins that brought me thrills. Across our fleet of Zodiacs, birders raised their binoculars to gaze in wonder at all the rare wildlife here: the Antipodes and Reischek’s parakeet, the Antipodean albatross, and even the subantarctic fur seal.