Bye Bye Bowie

David Bowie has died today after battling cancer for the last 18 months.

Time to put the Labyrinth dvd on repeat and remember the good times.

Hello Moto-Vol.III (Trains, Planes and Boats)

This post should be shorter than Vols I and II because I don't like flying, I only owned a toy train set as a girl and remembering some of the treatment I received as a crewmember in the Coast Guard is painful.

So...don't worry about settling in.

My train

When I was about 10-ish I asked for a train set for Christmas and I got a really cool Life-Like kit with a Union Pacific engine.

You could make a mountain out of this paper stuff but I wasn't very good at it and what I created would have baffled any geologist asked to describe it's origins.

I struggled at times because if all pieces of the track weren't connected properly the engine would stop running. None of my trestles were fastened to the board so sometimes the train would derail.

I quickly developed a God complex over the small village I had created and things took a dark turn when I put one of the tiny people on the track and raced the engine toward him whilst cackling maniacally.

Why I Don't Like Flying

 The reason is simple. One day in December 1979 my mother and I dropped my father off at a private airport in Louisiana so he could serve as a co-pilot and that was the last time I ever saw him alive.

I was thirteen months old.

Mom says I wandered around our apartment calling for him and all I can remember is that every time I heard the drone of an engine flying overhead I would go into a sort of trance and feel like there was something I was supposed to remember.

My grandfather owned a Cessna and let me fly it once when I was about 10 so I actually have about 45 seconds of flying time under my belt. Don't be jealous, it's not like I'm instrument rated.

My fondest memory of an aircraft was playing in the blue and yellow Stearman my cousins' maternal grandparents kept in a hangar near their home in Florida. I remember standing on the wing and crawling into the cockpit.

The design of the Stearman is amazing. Minus the engine and wheels it's just basically wood and canvas.

It's so light that you can pick it up at the tail and move it around.

Around age 12, I got super neurotic and became convinced I was going to die in a crash like my father.

Anytime I had to fly anywhere I would make sure I had made peace with everyone in my family and I would get a sickening dread the whole time I was on the plane.

The worst was when I went to China and we flew over Siberia. I remember looking down into row after row of snowy mountains and thinking, "they'll never find our bodies in there." I had brought sleeping pills so I could knock myself out on the flight but I never took them. I decided I wanted to see death coming instead.

In 2012 I outgrew my flying anxiety.

I still won't get in an airplane "for fun." I need to be going somewhere important and flight needs to be inevitable, not voluntary.

My grandfather, uncle, father and several of my male cousins are all pilots. I call it the Phillips sickness and I don't really understand the obsession.

Sometimes though, when I see a small plane taking off, just for a minute, something in my heart soars with it.

Boats

We had a ski boat when I was growing up and dad always controlled it.

Me and my sisters weren't allowed to drive it because our caustic estrogen might have somehow ruined it's performance capabilities.

I lifted up the cover over the motor well once to check out the setup and I later got a lecture about how I could have broken something (with my eyes apparently).

In 2007 I joined the U.S. Coast Guard and was sent to a god forsaken surf station where the Pacific Ocean was often at its nastiest.

I'm squinting into the sun at the center of the front row.

I was forced into indentured servitude aboard a 47-foot motor life boat and had to teach myself how to perform as a qualified crew member.

It involved learning about chart navigation, the boat specs, knot tying, first aid and search and rescue procedures.

I have nothing against the boat. It was incredibly bad ass.

It was made to go out into the worst sea conditions and take a beating. It had hidden buoyancy chambers that made it self righting within eight seconds of capsizing.

When the sea was particularly rough we had to wear special belts and clip ourselves to the D rings found on the upper deck of the boat to keep from being washed overboard.

Weeeee.

No, it wasn't the boat I hated- it was the tyrannical sadists I had to go out with.

I got assigned a mentor who once made the coxswain feign death at sea in total darkness just so he could force me to take us back in.

He wouldn't let me use the computer to plot our route back. I had to navigate by sight.

This wasn't a requirement of our crew qualifications, in fact, it was dangerous and completely unnecessary. My mentor was being a dickwad because he could.

Even Jeff the dying coxswain admitted he couldn't really tell where the jetty was under those conditions. In response my mentor told him to "continue dying."

The mentor and I had a pretty intense stare down before I put the boat in clutch ahead (the boat's lowest power setting). It took us an hour to get back to pier but I got us there safely.

Then there were the exercises in futility.

Eel grass is a protected plant species in California and it is found in abundance in Humboldt Bay where we would do our practice exercises.

We'd be going along and all the sudden a warning alarm would go off because the engines were overheating.

I'd have to go below, put on headphones go into the engine room and pull a mass of eel grass out of the sea strainer. The eel grass would be thrown overboard where it would team up with another floating mass of the stuff and five minutes later we'd suck it back up and the engines would start to overheat.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I had some mad boat hook skills.

We had a major inspection one year so I spent a lot of quality time wedged in the auxillary space scraping a strange green substance off the aluminum fittings with a tiny wire brush. Most of the boat's dirty work was left to the low ranking rabble like me. At least I got left in peace during these times.

Sometimes we would go out to sea to do joint training exercises with the Dolphin helicopters from Group Humboldt Bay.

The first time this happened the guys didn't see any need to explain procedures to me.

Thanks to this method of teaching I nearly got a shock from the rescue basket and I was almost pulled overboard because they told me to grab the trail line attached to the helicopter and pull with all my might. I was halfway over the fantail when I first heard them screaming for me to let go over the roar of the helo.

Dicks.

I pioneered the search and rescue selfie.

The real sticking point here was that the U.S. government had no problem giving me control of one of its million-dollar assets while back home, my father still believed I wasn't competent enough to drive his ski boat.

Ah, family.

Hello Moto (Supplemental)

In case you wanted some more info on Shelley and the Pike's Peak run, here's a video made by Stanford.

Rami's in the video too.

Hello Rami!

Hello Moto-Vol. II

Cars.

Fast cars.

How I used to love them.

Sometime after my father died and my mother was still single she bought a blue Camero with rear window louvres and an eight track player.

Mom had one of these. Surprising.

I suspect that this is the one time in her life when my Mom indulged her inner badass.

This would have been in 1979-1980 when I was around two-ish and maybe the engine rev and style of the car stuck with me on some toddler level.

My first car was a Saturn. It was a five speed and I had to have friends teach me how to drive it because my mom didn't know how and my dad didn't approve of me having my own car at 16. I struggled with the clutch pedal especially on the Alabama hills and stalled constantly but eventually I got it.

Two of the important things that I wanted to know were how to change the tires and how to change the oil. I figured these were basic maintenance issues that every driver should know.

There was only one problem and that was my stepdad's attitude toward women and mechanical objects.

To him the most dangerous thing to moving engine parts wasn't dirt or leaking oil or rust- it was estrogen.

Put a woman next to a motor and it was bound to get destroyed.

Either the woman would break it by touching it in the wrong way or her womanly presence would cause something to go wrong.

This is a man who is an electrical engineer, a man who once took the engine out of a friend's car in college and reassembled it in his dorm room as a prank.

The know-how was there but the willingness to teach me was not.

I was constantly told not to touch his tools, not to plug my guitar into his amplifier and not attempt to fix anything on my car because he would handle it when he had the time.

When I laid down newspaper on the back deck, lined it with brick and hosed it down regularly during a freeze to make my own ice rink my dad's only response was, "you're going to pick up every last scrap of that newspaper."

The way I see it, dad missed out on a lot of quality bonding time with me because of his entrenched notions of proper gender interests and behaviors.

I could have been the son he always wanted but my being a daughter got in the way.

I truly believe growing up in a environment with this patriarchal thinking is why I took up ice hockey, joined the military, became a dj and found myself fixated on certain cars. (I would have taken up drumming too if my mother hadn't decided that the flute was a more suitable instrument for me.)

I felt a constant desire to be contrary to what everyone expected of my gender.

I had to get in there and do the things people were saying women couldn't do so I could smugly correct the dinosaurs who tried to say women just weren't made to do certain things or just couldn't handle them.

Luckily, not all men shared my father's aversion to teaching me about cars.

I had some cool guys come into my life and help me out.

My friend Lesley's dad showed me how to change a tire.

The experience was enhanced when my mate Ben let me strip, balance and replace my own tires in the garage where he worked.

William showed me how to do an oil change. He had these nice little ramps to put the car on so you could get under it comfortably and he had a very calm temperament which was also helpful.

My friend Ryan's father had a silver Porche Boxter which he was going to let Ryan an me take to Auburn for a football game but the weather was bad and he changed his mind. He did however let me sit in the driver's seat and start the engine so I could experience what it sounds like to have an engine roar to life behind my head.

Another friend of mine named Andy owned a black convertible Boxter and he let me drive it home from a bar one night. I was mildly buzzed at the time and had no business being behind the wheel. I can only guess that Andy was worse off than me and so letting me drive seemed like the solid choice at the time. What I remember about the experience was the smell of leather the precise handling of the gear shift and a voice in my head going "don't wreck it don't wreck it don't wreck it."

She shifts well.

I dated a condescending structural engineer named Sam once and thought it would be cool to convince the guys at a local car lot to let me take their Dodge Viper out so I could pick Sam up for lunch in it.

A Viper in "hello officer" red.

I remember sitting in the drivers seat and chatting with the sales guy- "So, bottom feed fueling, what's that all about?" By the time I switched into my "so, I was thinking" spiel I realized what a huge liability having the car would be and that I didn't even like Sam well enough to do something like that for him.

In 2003-ish I worked for a newspaper that wanted a story on the Motorsports Hall of Fame at the Talladega Superspeedway. I could have gone to the museum, asked a few questions and written up a nice little piece but I saw an opportunity and I shamelessly went for it.

I went all wide eyed and "gosh mister that's great" with my host and let slip that I would loooove to see Speedway track.

Wish granted.

We drove through a tunnel out into the center of the speedway in his Ford Explorer.

It just so happened there was one of the those NASCAR driving classes going on that day.

It's one of those things where people who are bored and wealthy can hand over a couple of grand to get behind the wheel of racecar and zoom around the track a few times.

I will never forget the thundering roar of the cars tearing around the track. I got chill bumps on my arms and a terrible yearning to get behind the wheel.

I had never liked NASCAR before because I get panicked in large crowds of people and these crowds of people were the worst.

Imagine being stuck in a seething mob of drunken rednecks who look down on book learnin' and uppity women. They'll all be wearing wife beaters and puffy trucker hats and flicking mullet sweat on each other in their frothing enthusiasm. Beside them large women in Confederate Flag bikinis will be embracing the old Southern adage that "tanned fat is better than white fat."

I. Would. Die.

But take away the masses and give me trackside access to watch the cars and something magical happens.

We toured a workshop in the infield and I got to look under the hood of one of the cars. Every part not dedicated to making the car go faster had been removed. The headlights at the front of the car were decals.

Steve sometimes pretended he was an inefficiently placed air filter. 

Some of the earlier race cars in the museum had willy nilly roll bars going all over the place but this car seemed to have sorted things out.

Seeing that I couldn't hijack one of the race cars and take it around the track I asked my host if he would mind driving us around once or twice.

Wish granted.

The track has 33 degree banked turns which require a minimum speed of  around 70 miles an hour to keep the cars from sliding off the track. I will always remember how the world slid sideways as we coasted into one of these turns and how I almost shat myself when the driver slowed down the car to show me how necessary speed was.

In 2005 I temped for a company in Monterey that had two warehouses full of rare motorcycles and cars, including a Shelby Cobra. They let me wander around in one of them and breathe in the rarefied air during one of my breaks.

In 2006 while I was living in Baja California I met a racing team called Dos Gringos y Muchos Mexicanos (two white guys and a lot of Mexicans).

The car they raced was an old Volkswagen Beetle and the race in question was the Baja 1000.

The Beetles run in the underdog class where the likelihood of even finishing the race in one piece is not good.

God speed little bug.

This is the class that is closest to most Mexicans' hearts because your "crew" consists of a bunch of guys with random tools who show up to help out. For their efforts they are paid in beer and goodwill.

I remember getting a small thrill as I helped the team push the car to the qualifiying inspection point.

If I recall correctly the car disintegrated somewhere in the Vizcaino desert but the drivers were unharmed.

My final badass car experience came about through meeting my friend Rami who was finishing up his PhD at Stanford University. Rami's thesis focused on what happened to a car during autonomous drift.

One magical night he took me to the University's workshop to see their show pony-an Audi TT that could be driven autonomously.

Stanford made headlines when they raced the car (nicknamed Shelley) up Pikes Peak via remote control.

Rami showed me the computers that had been neatly accommodated into the Audi's trunk, let me sit behind the wheel and called the event "When Kelly met Shelley."

This is Shelley. We hung out once.

Seriously, this night still ranks as one of the most awesome and unforgettable things that has ever happened to me in my entire life.

I still get a thrill from certain cars but my interest has definitely switched from speed to function.

Hello Moto - Vol. I

I've been reading Guy Martin's book "When You Dead, You Dead" and it made me do a lot of thinking about my own relationship to cars, motorcycles and mechanical repairs.

My earliest contact with a motorcycle involved my mate Rusty Frith in Dothan, Alabama. I was about 11, maybe younger, and Rusty had this sweet little motorcycle that was just our size. I believe the fuel tank was painted yellow and it may have been a Honda SL70 or a Yamaha Mini Enduro (but maybe not because this would have been the late 80s). Rusty told me all about the specs but I didn't know what he was talking about. I just wanted to ride the bike.

And yes, this is the same Rusty who wouldn't let me be the Airwolf when we were playing with plastic helicopter toys.

This is also the same Rusty who I forced to jump on a trampoline with me after there had been a heavy rain. He said it wasn't a good idea and I said he was a coward. We ended up cracking our skulls against each other and getting goose eggs on our foreheads.

I should have listened to him on that one.

My general recollection of Rusty's bike was that it was fun to ride and easy to handle. I didn't go too fast on it but I drove it by myself and only needed Rusty's help a few times.

The next motorcycle I had contact with was a Honda Shadow my dad owned. He got two helmets with it- one black and one white.

When he was away I would put on the black one and pretend to be Darth Vader.

Dad would take me out for rides on it but I didn't enjoy them very much. He would start yelling at me about "fighting him on the turns" and the first time we went out I wore shorts and felt the sting of a thousand mosquitoes meeting their death against my bare legs. I also burnt my legs on the muffler several times.

Sometime around my 15th birthday I saw the anime film "Akira" and fell in love with Kaneda's bike and the idea of owning a crotch rocket. (Fun fact: a fan of the film built an Akira bike in 2012!)

When I was about 16 a bike shop called Moto Ace opened near my house. I was in the shop all the time, admiring the leather riding gear and fogging up the farings of the Ducatis and Cagiva Mitos.

One day this sweet customized Italian racing bike came in and I asked how much it cost. It was around $40,000 and had been especially imported and purchased by the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. I was mad that the bike was destined to be put on display somewhere and never ridden and developed a severe case of hard feeling toward Mr. Barber. These hard feelings would continue after the man opened a Porche Driving School with a price tag that only rich individuals and corporations could afford. A recent check of the museum's website has informed me that they have a Britten V1000 in their collection. I now have a permanent case of hard feelings towards Mr. Barber. My condition appears incurable.

Anyway, I enrolled in this black and white photography class and one assignment was to track a moving object so the object appeared clearly while the background was blurred. My first thought was to get a guy from Moto Ace to let me photograph him riding his bike. One of them was willing to oblige and he even loaned me some leathers and took me for a ride afterwards. At one point we went over a bump and I very nearly came off the back of the bike. I was terrified but not completely dissuaded from owning one.

A few months later a guy from one of my uni classes decided to sell his bike and when I expressed interest and asked if he would take me for a ride he was happy to do it. He gave me a helmet to put on that was too big and I didn't tighten the strap enough. While I was wrestling with the huge helmet he told me how he had modified the fuel tank so more oxygen would get in and bike would go faster.

He tore ass around the Birmingham interstates with me holding onto him for dear life while the over-sized helmet tried to float away from my head. I felt sure I was going to die and a small inner voice suggested that a crotch rocket might not be the bike for me.

Aside from the fear of speed I had safety concerns and control issues. A little 150 cc Ninja was easy for me to lift and push around but I would have been blown all over the place on the open highway. Heavier bikes were difficult for me to even lift off the kickstand and I was afraid of losing control and having one fall on me.

I decided to try out a Vespa instead. A place called Bogart's Motorsports had recently opened up and I went there for a test drive. The Vespa they gave had a pearly finish to the paint. I wanted a Vespa because there was one in Roman Holiday and because I had seen the movie Quadrophenia (the scooter was a Lambretta) and thought I wanted to bring back the mods' sense of fashion.

My first few moments on the Vespa I got a bad case of the wobbles in the parking lot and almost ran into a woman's car as she was entering the lot. I was told that the scooter wasn't street legal because of it's low speed and realized there would be no where to drive it and having it would be pointless.

That might have been the end of the motorcycle fever if it hadn't been for my best friend William Gray becoming the owner of a wrecked Ninja.

Some guy that had been living with Will's family had bought the thing and wrecked it when he skidded out on some loose gravel. The accident had nearly torn off one of his pinky fingers and after that he didn't want to "get back on the horse" so to speak.

So William bought the thing from him and it sat on a stand in his basement for a while and got tinkered with from time to time.

At some point William started riding it again and I asked him if he would teach me how to.

We went to our old high school parking lot on a weekend and Will showed me the basics. I went around the parking lot in first gear and finally got up the courage to go to second. The pedal was munted so I couldn't shift properly, I panicked, let the clutch go and gasped as the bike shuddered to a halt and started to tip over.

Somehow I managed to pull my legs out of the way and I felt an instant sense of relief when I saw that the bike had fallen beside and not on top of me.

At that point I heard a high pitched shriek and saw William running towards me.

Thinking he was concerned for my safety I stood up and lifted my hands to show him I was okay only to have him rush past me and cradle the bike and whisper to it, "I'll never let her touch you again."

And I never did. In fact, all desire to ride motorcycles pretty much left me at that point and I haven't been on one since.

I still love the style of vintage motorcycles and the fact that they weren't built for break neck speed.

A few months ago I saw a bunch of vintage bikes on Springs Road and found out a local club was doing a ride out to Akaroa.

New Zealand offers loads of places where you can cruise and road trip on a bike without being surrounded by dickheads popping wheelies on highways or speeding through rush hour traffic.

The admiration of bikes remains but the need for speed is long gone.

Departure Day

It rained all last night and is still going strong this morning. It was very pleasant to listen to before going to sleep.

I sat down to work on my jigsaw puzzle last night but realized the futility and packed it up instead. 

I set up the camera on a tripod and attempted to take a self-portrait in the living room. The results are what I call “A portrait of the researcher as a chubby middle aged woman.” 

I have saved a few of the least horrible images so I have memories of my pleasant times spent in this house.

After the photos I gathered up personal items and put things back the way they were in the house.

I ended the evening by reading a chapter of “Kea, Bird of Paradox.”

I was struck by the reality that this habitat will become inhospitable to the kea in a few short months and that many of them will face starvation if they don’t find adequate food sources during the winter. They are brilliantly adapted to dealing with snow, cold temperatures and high winds but an empty stomach is still fatal.

I have been comparing the lives of the captive kea at Willowbank to the wild kea here. The captives have a safe environment in which to survive but the risks there is that they will get bored so constant stimulation and environmental enrichment is required. The birds can only fly for short distances and their diets do not consist of their native foods. Willowbank’s flock has a good social system because most of its birds are siblings born from Rugby and his mate. They receive stimulus from the visitors who walk through and bring in new items like strollers, hats, bags and foods.

The wild birds can soar and find endless sources of entertainment and stimulation but they face starvation risks in winter, 1080 and lead poisoning, rock throwing, being hit by cars and even some shootings by frustrated locals. 

Their ability to get over shyness and insatiable need to satisfy their curiosity endears them to visitors but also puts them at risk for harm.

I wish DOC would put out feeding stations at forest locations closed to the public and supplement the kea’s diet in winter. Starvation seems to be the biggest threat to kea numbers. Until such a program exists, the birds will struggle with limited natural food sources during this time and sheep or ski field foods will become a means for survival.

The Kea Conservation Trust might be interested in trialing such a program. Funds and locals would be needed to keep the stands stocked with food but local volunteers could help. Researches could also participate in observing the birds during these times to see how many come to feed, the state of their health and social interactions at the feeding stations.

The stands would only be stocked in the winter so the birds would resume their natural dispersal and foraging habits in the spring.  

Such a feeding program existed on Kapiti Island where a DOC ranger put out nectar for the kakas every day. 

Anyone arguing that this would disrupt the natural habits of the birds should be reminded that they are already drawn to refuse dumps, garbage bins and cafes where human food sources can be exploited.

A local told me that even though the bin lids in Arthur’s Pass Village had been weighted to keep out the kea, eight of them had been observed working together to lift the lid and get into the garbage.

I observed banded kea “M” going into the storeroom of the Wobbly Kea. He would go in for a few seconds and regularly pop his head out to make sure no one was coming. At one point he hopped out and ran around the corner when one of the employees went in. When she was gone he checked that the coast was clear and went back in.

Death’s Corner is littered with plastic bottles and containers and the remains of human foods like carrots, chips, fruit cores, spilt coffee and cauliflower. 

I found 4 scavenging candy from a container thrown in the rocks. Her beak was coated in sticky sugary matter.

I feel that some of these items are taken from visitors rather than willingly given but feeding still takes place. 

I’ve seen people put down bits of fruit and one family tore up a hamburger bun and gave it to three birds.

It is interesting to hear what visitors to DC tell others about the bird. 

Some say they are smart and the world’s only alpine parrot while others say that they kill sheep, destroy cars (which they sometimes do) and “will take your finger off.”

It slowly dawned on me that people might get the impression of keas as dangerous because of the unique size and shape of their beaks. 

However, it is their cousin the kaka that has the beak form to crush objects efficiently. 

According to Diamond and Bond the kea is more adept at prying, probing and tearing.

Their beak tips are not sharp and they have the capacity to be very gentle and precise with the things they pick up or explore.

I have been pinched on several occasions by youngsters and grumpy keas at Willowbank and only twice has the pinch nearly broken the skin. It isn’t a pleasant sensation by any means but it isn’t life threatening and it removed the fear I once had about getting gouged in some way.

I think this perception of the kea as a blood thirsty finger eater is good for making people keep a respectful distance from them. (Now if we can only get the kea to remain a respectful distance from the people we might reach an easy peace.)

I’m planning on stopping at DC for one last observation this morning although I’m not sure there will be much activity in this weather.

Yesterday I found a rain soaked A singing out mournfully beneath a rock but after watching me approach he flew off with a series of contact calls.

As I was sitting in the car and writing down this info, 4 appeared out of the bushes and I went out to see what she was up to. 

She was by herself and she went through a series of play moves. She shook the piece of plaid fabric someone had left on a rock. She walked all over my car and tested the rubber window lining with her beak. She tested a leather dog collar with her beak before picking it up and tossing it off a rock. She picked up a stone and tossed it away from herself and then hopped after it, picked it up again and gave it another toss. I picked up the same rock and tossed it for her. She picked it up for a few more tosses and seemed content to throw it by herself. After that she fossicked in the nearby rocks. 

When she got too saturated with rain she gave her neck a shake like a dog and made all her head and neck feathers stand out on their ends. 

It was still raining lightly and the visibility was limited by mist when I left her fossicking at about 7:30 pm.

January 3, 2016

I am now going to gather my things, load up the car and turn in the key to Holiday House over to Donna. 

I will miss being here but I have missed my family and hot showers and clean laundry and Indian curries so I am glad to be going home.

It is nice that this place is only two hours from home and accessible to me on any weekend. I think my next few visits will be long weekends. I hope to come back in a few months and see what the group at DC is like. 

On A Rainy Saturday

1 & 2 January, 2016

Nick came to visit on New Years’ Day, showing up at the door with a wailing Alex who took a moment to realize that it was me and that I was in this strange house in this strange place.

I had an excellent morning observation with the kea from about 9-11:20 and I had intended to go again in the early afternoon but Nick doesn’t like hanging around for hours while I obsess over kea and Alex would probably have had a meltdown of some sort.

So, since I was being visited by two babies we decided to go out and do some human friendly things. We took Alex to see the kune kunes which made him let off a string of excited unintelligible vocabulary while reaching his arms out towards them and opening and closing his hands.

I fed momma pig an apple and we popped into the hotel for a lemonade. As we were walking home we passed the semi tame white rabbit grazing in his usual area.

The train engines were being lined up for the Trans Alpine passenger train and I thought Alex might like to look at them. We came out of the middle subway that runs to the station to find that the Trans Alpine was there already. A group in the first carriage waved to Alex while he stared at them in a bewildered state.

The TA stops at this station every day at 3:30 in the afternoon. They have to add extra engines to pull the train up the grades in the pass. The process only takes around five minutes and then they head off toward Christchurch.

We went to Arthur’s Pass village next to get some food at the Wobbly Kea. I walked to the DOC visitor’s centre to ask about the banded kea I had seen. The woman told me the Kea Conservation Trust is now responsible for banding so I will try to contact Tamsin Orr-Walker to get info about the individual birds I’ve been observing. Hopefully she will be interested in some of my data and we can have a nice exchange of information.

Nick and I took Alex on the Bealey Nature Walk and I was able to take some better photographs of the sundew species there with my micro lens. We walked to the river and Nick entertained Alex by throwing big rocks into the pools and making a big splash. Alex tried to do the same but ended up throwing the rocks behind him. Alex wanted to walk by himself along the wooden paths even though he had difficulty with some of the stairs and would use his hands and feet to climb down. If we tried to pick him up and carry him he became irritable.

Nick made it clear he didn’t want to sit at Death’s Corner while I hunted Kea so we drove home and I returned in my car. It was about 7:35 when I arrived and the only Kea present were two birds sitting high up on the metal power line tower. I was able to get some information about the individuals that had been present thirty minutes prior. There had been about eight in all including one banded with the letter “E” who I have never seen before. Maybe the day was too hot because none of the birds came down to the parking lot and the two on the power pole flew off to the mountains after a machine gun call seemed to summon them there.

Today I got up at 6 and struggled to get myself awake. Alex had woken up in the night, wailed, crawled onto the mattress with Nick and me and proceeded to kick, head butt and wedge himself between us so that getting comfortable and going back to sleep was impossible.

I managed to get to DC at 7:15am. There were no birds in in the parking lot and mine was the only car so I waited and watched until I saw one kea land above me on the old Otira pass road.

I got my notebook and camera and hiked up the gravel road remains until I saw 4 walking around a little way ahead of me.

She immediately flew over and landed by me so I sat down to observe.

Within minutes C, a hen and a subadult male came out of the bushes and headed toward me. C must be the patriarch because the other male hung back while C walked over to check me out.

The hen also stayed with him and seemed solicitous of food from him. She had a slight yellow coloration to one part of her eye ring so I’m guessing she is a subadult as well.

We were soon joined by four other birds including another female fledgling that 4 repeatedly tussled with.

The adults began to forage and fossick in their group, tossing large rocks out of the way to see what was underneath and munching on daisy heads and other low growing alpine plants that were present in abundance.

This was an obvious social feeding time. C would perch on a rock from time to time and check to see that everything was in order. The behaviour of C was very neutral toward the other birds. He did not set up his crown feathers or make any aggressive displays toward the other birds.

4 and the other fledgling female would lock beaks roll on their backs, kick, flap their wings and hop around each other. When I got closer to them to take pictures I noticed that they were making a low metallic sounding noise toward each other which seemed to signal that they were both ready to tussle.

One male walked up to my face set his crown and nape feathers up and made a strange sound like a police siren approaching. It was louder than the fledglings tussle call but not shrill. I have no idea if this was a challenge or an attempt at flirting and I may never know because he was chased off by C who seemed to be telling him to move along and mind his own business.

Another amazing display happened between two subadults. It seemed like a courtship display of some sort where the two touched beaks before standing shoulder to should and unfolding their wings to show a little bit of the red coloration underneath. One bird gently grabbed the nape feathers of the other and appeared to be getting into position to mount although he did not. There were no vocalizations during this. Perhaps this was practice courtship.

Throughout my time observing I was approached by different birds to see what I was doing before they wandered off to a nearby plant to have breakfast. At one point I was laying on my stomach to get a bird’s eye level view and 4 hopped on my pants leg followed by A.

A light pinch on my Achilles tendon led to the curious explorer flapping to a nearby distance and resuming his fossicking.

My presence seem to be accepted and not interfere with the birds’ normal fossicking and play behaviours. I was pleased to see 4 nibbling at the flower heads and another fledgling had mastered holding her food in one foot and eating it.

I saw a few moments of allopreening but the main goal of the birds seemed to be feeding.

No one made any begging gestures for regurgitated food although one bird did give C a quick preen on his neck as he was passing by.

Kea seem to get itchy feet and I wonder if they don’t get sandfly bites too. One fledgling went to town picking at her feet with her beak for a good two minutes.

There are a lot of orange, pollen stained feathers around the beaks and there is a lot of kea sneezes. Most of them are quick “chew” sounds but one individual’s sneeze was so powerful that it ended in a medium pitched cry.

At one point another bird joined the group so there were nine in total.

After about an hour of being with the upper road group, 4 flew down to the parking lot with another fledgling and A.

They seemed to get somewhat hyper and the male landed on top of a tourists’ rental van and flapped his wings and screamed at them when they got closer to look at him. He then went to town, stripping the rubber off their radio antennae.

The family was still quite taken with him and this may be because the van was a rental and the repair bill will be going to someone else.

4 chased the male away and took over tearing at the antennae.

Then she hopped onto my car and tested the seals on the windows and tried to mangle my antennae although it is all metal and wouldn’t yield.

When I approached the car she hopped around the roof like a playful puppy ready for a tussle. The other fledgling tried the back tire with her beak while the male poked at the front one and stuck his beak into the front of the car to see if there was anything to pick at.

4 picked at the back wiper and jump back in surprise when I showed her how the wiper arm lifted up. After the rigorous Kea Warrant of Fitness test my old vehicle seemed no worse for the wear.

The birds’ play came to an end when a black backed gull flew over and they took off together back toward the old Otira overpass where I had observed them feeding.

I left then to get home to Nick and shortly after it began to rain steadily.

After breakfast Nick and Alex headed home and I returned to DC. I saw 4 perched on a rock in the rain but she looked uncomfortable and soon flew away. I am guessing the rest of the kea have found dry spots under rocks and bushes because I did not see them although I did her some contact calls.

I have been indoors the rest of the day. The outdoor pants I was wearing were not waterproof nor were my sneakers and I was getting wet and cold.

I took a monster nap and now I am thinking of going to the Wobbly Kea for my last dinner of this trip. Tomorrow I will try to do one last morning observation. I will be sad to leave this area and desperate to get back as soon as I can.

 If I can get in some long weekends out here throughout the year that would be ideal. A week seems like too long to be away from the family but only getting out for one long visit a year won't help me get any robust data.

I will put on my gumboots and take my umbrella now so I can do an evening check in at DC. I have a feeling the group will all be nestled away somewhere dry while I’m wondering around in the wet trying to find them.

Thursday and the New Year

I had a few hours observation in the morning at Death’s Corner where 7 was again present.

7 was shy at first but a combination of small almond bits and insatiable curiosity over what I was doing with my notebook and pen overwhelmed him in the end and he stayed quite close. At one point he took a firm grip on the edge of my notebook and gave it a short tug.

7 enjoys the wind in his hair.

I have found a round stone structure with a moss covered top that I lay on so I can peer into the surrounding bush. I call it my layby. When the kea groups move around I usually follow them and try to sit at a level that is closer to their height.

Many of the kea had pollen stained feathers around their beaks.

Yesterday 7 landed on a car and began to pick at the rubber on one of the windows. He was chased to my car by a combined group of tourists who then tried to shoo him away but I told them not to bother. The car’s paint is faded and cracked in places and I’m not sure it will pass another warrant of fitness to stay road worthy. In short, a bit more picking won’t hurt.

The car had been sitting in the sun for about two hours and the metal was hot to the touch. 7 was having such a lovely time posing and being admired by a group of about eight tourists that he tried to overlook the burning sensation in the bottom of his feet by first lifting one foot and then shifting to the other to comic effect. Finally the heat was too much for him and he flew off into the mountains.

I have been in the habit of observing in the morning to around midday and then going on an easy hike on one of the nearby trails. Just before I left DC the Westpac helicopter flew over and I assumed a tramper had been injured and activated their location beacon.

I drove to the trail head of Devil’s Punchbowl and huffed and puffed my way up the mountain. 

Two other helicopters flew over and I got the impression there was a disaster somewhere down the road. 

Piripiri growing along the path to the Devil's Punchbowl 

When I reached the highway I found that the road was closed and traffic was backed up through Arthur’s Pass village.

I asked a woman what happened and she said a tourist bus had lost breaking power down one of the hills and crashed. Three people had been seriously injured. I parked the car in the shade and decided to go to the Wobbly Kea for an ice cream.

News spread through the crowd that the road would be closed for an additional four hours. Some people turned and went back toward Christchurch others left their cars to buy food and chat with each other.

I bought an ice cream and later a chicken curry and took up one end of a comfy blue coach with a German gal on the other end. It was funny, she was reading a scholarly journal in German and I was reading a scholarly book on Kea. At one point I pulled out my journal to amend some of my notes and a bit later she pulled out a journal and wrote some notes. We chatted briefly about the accident but mainly sat in silence reading. Two hours later the road was reopened and she went on her way and I went to the car. We wished each other well.

My car was parked on the opposite side of the road so I crossed it to a truck that was waiting to go and asked if they would let me pull out in front when the traffic started moving. The general consensus in the car was that they would not.

“You’ve been sitting in this heat for hours and you’re ready to go, I understand,” I said.

I went to the car and put on my turn signal. Once the traffic started to move the man in the truck made a waving gesture with his hand. They had changed their minds and decided to allow me in. I waved and blew a couple of kissed as I pulled out and got on my way.

The accident happened on a sharp curve past the Otira viaduct. The bus had flipped on its side and a burning smell still hung in the air as I drove past. Another crumpled car had been loaded onto a wrecker.

Three serious injuries were reported after the wreck.

Apparently when the bus lost control it smashed into another vehicle. The bus was driven by a kiwi but filled with Chinese tourists. Passing motorists had pulled over and broken bus windows to help free the tourists. They offered water and comfort to the injured.

Good Kiwi sorts helping out those in need.

The Otira hotel had become a hub of activity and one reporter was still on the scene when I arrived. Ian let me use his laptop to read about the accident.

He told me some of my neighbours were having a New Year’s party later and that I was welcome to go. I was pleased although I ended up falling asleep at around 11pm and only becoming half-awake with the setting off of fireworks around midnight.

I met the gallery owner next door and his wife who did a PhD on women’s mana within her iwi. We had a chat about research.

I fed the mama kune kune an apple and one of the Clydesdales got a pear which he obliterated. I saw what must have been an escaped pet rabbit nibbling grass behind the hotel. He was white with dark grey spots and he let me get quite close before he hopped off slowly to another grazing patch.

I had a few text messages from Nick that made me think he was coming for a visit so I waited expectantly for him. He never showed up and I got too sleepy to stay awake.

It’s 8:30 on New Year’s Day and I’m going to go have a bath and head out to Death’s Corner. 

(More notes on morning observations to follow) 

Tuesday & Wednesday

December 29 and 30, 2015

I fell asleep midday on Tuesday and woke up just before there was a forceful knock at the door. I was alarmed at who might be banging on the door but I was happy to see Nick standing on the porch.

He said he reckoned I had just come down here to nap but I spent the morning up at Death’s Corner hanging out with about eight kea.

The star of the group is a female banded juvenile I call 4. (This is the number on her leg bands) She challenged another male juvenile and chased him and some other adults away whenever there was something she wanted.

I returned to DC in the evening and she was there again.

This morning when I went out to DC to observe she was there again. She seems to be related to an adult male banded with a C tag. He preened her briefly and then she preened him too and opened her beak so he would feed her. He made a regurgitating gesture although I couldn’t see if there was any crop milk. She hopped around C in circles like an excited child and followed him around the parking lot.

While I was seated at one location she flew up and into my back briefly. I don’t know if she was testing me out as a perch or just having some target practice but she tried again a bit later.

There was an adult male with an 8 band on his leg and he kept me company. 

From time to time I would put out small bits of almond to bring the birds close to me for study and photography but mostly I followed them around and sat down nearby to watch them.

 8 would touch my knee gently with his beak to get my attention. He adopted a relaxed posture where he sat down on the back of his legs and watched me for a bit. He also took the edge of my notebook and pen in his beak.

The people that come to DC are usually delighted by the kea but one woman who arrived in a Jaguar with her husband stayed there with the windows rolled up and lost her temper when a kea landed on the hood of her car. 

She got out of the car with a shirt and said they were awful birds that were shitting everywhere. I think she reacted this way because she was terrified of the kea and it was a glimpse at the down side of how tourists and visitors can react around them. 

Yesterday a saw a girl throw a book out the window of her vehicle at a kea that had landed nearby and I almost said something to her. 

Another man warned me when a kea was on the roof of my car and said to someone else that the birds would “get your fingers.”

I’ve been nipped and pinched by kea many times before at Willowbank. As a child, I received more painful pinches from my mother’s fingernails when she thought I was being naughty in church. 

The fact that Keas have a powerful multi tool in their beaks and that only a few of them pinch in earnest has cured my fear of bites. Every species has its grumps. Kea are no different.

What amazes me is the extent to which they learn about the world through their mouths. The beak and tongue tell them about the flavor, textures, durability and the function of objects. They learn first through manipulating objects with their beaks. 

While adults remain curious about new objects in their environment their reactions are positively sober in comparison with the juveniles. To the latter, the world is one big novelty shop. Everything must be pulled, tossed, pried and nipped. 

There are the natural objects of twigs, berries, grasses and rocks and then there are the strange man made things like zippers, Velcro, rubber and plastic. 

A youngster discovers eye drops.

Kea parents and adults indulge juvenile antics because this is how the young learn to survive.

I think the flock I have been seeing at DC is part of some sort of extended family group.

I’ve been going out to DC in the morning around 10 am and staying for about an hour and a half. 

I return in the evenings at around 7 p.m.

Today I went on a small hike down the Bealey Track.

 There were some amazing alpine plants. 

There were two species of sundew growing close to each other and several varieties of daisy. 

I saw one tomtit and it proved nearly impossible to photograph.

This afternoon I picked some lupins for the house and I found what I’m guessing is a deer skull while I was wading through them. I’m thinking of taking it home for Audrey to use as a model for some of her drawings. I may paint it.

I had a slice of carrot cake at the Otira pub and feed some apple to the mama kune kune there. She was constantly pestered by her three portly piglets and finally she just had to lay on her side and let them nurse.

After that I got another apple from the house and took it out into the back paddock where the Clydesdales are. I went under the wire fence and found three of the boys grazing in a group. There is a forth who was off doing his own thing. I’m not normally nervous around horses but these are big animals and I was cautious around them. I fed the apple to the closest horse and another came to investigate. I let them both sniff my hands to see I didn’t have any more fruit and they went back to grazing. 

If I had to describe their attitude towards me and I would say it was passing indifference. I walked home after that made myself a cup of tea and worked on my jigsaw puzzle.

It’s 12:15 am at the moment and I think that will do it for me today.

Later That Afternoon

28 December 2015

I woke up from a late afternoon nap feeling mildly disoriented. I decided to go to the pub and get some dinner.

Looking around at all the ramshackle buildings and signs of family life in the town gives one the impression that Otira is falling apart and thriving at the same time.

To get to the pub you have to use the pedestrian subway running under the train tracks.

Above the entrance to one tunnel is the date 1922. During that time the town would have been thriving with its little school, tea rooms and tidy houses tenanted by the rail workers and their families.

On the tunnel walls is some half-hearted graffiti. I say half-hearted because there is really no pride of ownership in the tagging. There is one message of love, the words “kia kaha,” a rough sketch of two people and the word “bitch.”

There isn’t one single representation of a penis anywhere. This disappointed me somehow.

You can tell that those who felt compelled to leave their mark were in a small town state of mind. 

Why use a patina of rich colours or explore the true depths of profanity when your audience is less than 100 townsfolk and they aren’t really bothered in the first place?

I had my first whitebait patty at the pub. It was good but it took a bit of concentration on my part to not think about eating whole tiny fish.

I met Ian, a man who works at the pub, lives in a bus behind it and has a healthy respect for kea.

He was kind enough to show me where the town’s rubbish tip is so I can go there and look for kea at some point.

There is a mama kune kune and three piglets by the pub. There is also an extremely tall and very exotic looking goat which I’m told is Namibian. I will look this up later to confirm.

I managed to feed an apple to one of the Clydesdales earlier and I tried to make nice with the neighbour’s giant dog (named Turbo) but while I was petting him I hit a sore spot and he snapped at me-not in a close call sort of way but in a way that let me know he had been hurt. His owner apologized and I decided it was time to get on with my exploration of the area.

My other neighbour Philip told me there was a path to the river behind our houses. I had on my Muck Master boots and I walked toward the back paddock until I was confronted with some flimsy looking wire. I crawled over it (in my summer dress, flashing panty once again) and immediately came across a dead Weka. I thought it would be nice to have some of its feathers but when I tried to pull some out the whole bird came with them. I left it alone.

I walked through a small wooded area and a kereru flew overhead into a nearby tree. They are very large birds and very noisy flyers.

On the other side of the woods there was a rocky ledge which I climbed up to find a gravel and grass road. I climbed down another rocky bank and reached the stony bed of the Otira River.

To my delight I found a natural pool just out of the river’s current where I can go for a dip in the hot afternoon.  At least, I mean to try. The water is very cold and it would mean walking over there in my swim suit and risking becoming a meal for thousands of sand flies.

On the way back through the wooded area I thought I would take another look at the dead Weka. I bent over it to study its state of decay and then glanced up to see a couple of people watching me from their back porch.

That’s when I realized I had probably become Monday night’s entertainment and Otira’s official “weirdo in residence.”

I fumbled quickly over the paddock wires and made a B-line for the house.

I’m sitting in the living room now watching Turbo’s owner talk to his neighbour over the fence. A little while later a man with a long grey beard and two tea cups walks through his back yard and into Turbo’s back yard.

Tea and a chinwag seems like a nice way to spend the evening.

I hear the roar of KiwiRail engines across the street.