Monday

The group headed out on the 9:30 a.m. Qantas flight to Auckland, connecting to LAX and then Philadelphia.  Aidan and I hung out until my flight left at 3:15 p.m., I think his was going to Napier at 5:15 p.m.  To kill time we visited the Kiwi Birdlife Park near the Gondola. They very kindly admitted us free. The park had some very interesting information and we got to see a kiwi feeding. They are such strange birds! Kiwis are in huge decline due to introduced predators.  It is unbelievable the size of the egg that females lay compared to her body size.  It is equivalent to a human bearing a 35-pound child!  At least the female gets a break during incubation because the male takes over for that 3 month period and incubates the egg.

They are the only bird that has nostrils at the end of their beak. At the conservation show we learned about possums, stoats and rabbits some of the worst offenders in this environment.  Prior to the introductions by humans, the only land mammals here were three species of bats.

They are training this rainbow lorikeet (another invasive) to show how they take over native bird nests and also to help raise money for the Kiwi Birdlife Park, which is funded only by donations.  It used to be a landfill and they have reforested with native trees over the last 30 years.

We had a nice lunch in town—today is ANZAC Day.  It is somewhat like our Memorial Day or Veterans Day, in which they commemorate the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps soldiers who landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey early on the morning of April 25,1915 during the First World War.  Several thousand lives were lost.

I connected with my flight from Auckland to LAX, the first of back-to-back red-eye flights. I had a 12 hour layover in LAX and arrived in Gainesville the morning of April 26. I will be glad to finally get some real sleep, but it was an amazing trip!