Kepler Track: Part II
Day 2: Luxmore Hut to Iris Burn Hut: 14.6 kms (8.9 miles).
*Note: a burn comes from a Scottish/Northern English word for a small stream; a brook. Since NZ was colonized by folks from Great Britain, a lot of these words are still present today.
On Day 2 of the hike, after climbing to the summit of Mt. Luxmore, we were greeted by a kea, the world’s only species of alpine parrot! Many of the kea in this area are banded, and if you can see or get a picture of a kea with its band, you can upload it to a database called www.keadatabase.nz, where a team of volunteers will parse through photos and record observations. This king of the mountain is named Shae and was banded only last summer (July 2019). He’s commonly seen around Luxmore Hut as well!
In total, I counted 10 kea along the trail. Shae was the only individual that I could see was banded, but I still recorded all my other observations. The cutest kea are the juveniles, in my opinion. Even though they are as large as their parents, they have bright yellow rings around their eyes and squawk and follow their parents around helplessly.
Kea adult in foreground and adolescent in background. See the bright yellow ring around its eye?
Day 3: Iris Burn to Moturau Hut: 16.2 km (9.8 miles).
For some reason I took almost no pictures on this stretch. It was beautiful though, mostly mossy forest.
