Two in the Bush (11 page)

The sky had grown steadily blacker and the valley darker, with faint shreds of mist floating across the surface of the lake. We lit the lamps and in the soft, yellow glow of their light we set
about making our evening meal. Presently we could hear voices and they sounded as if their owners were just outside the hut but, venturing out into the gloom, we could dimly see three figures
making their way along the edge of the lake some quarter of a mile away. We shouted greetings to one another, then went in and put on the kettle for the deer hunters and within fifteen minutes they
had joined us.

It is always wrong to say that a person looks typical of a country, for within any country you get so many different types, but nevertheless, these three were, as far as I was concerned, fairly
typical New Zealanders. They were tall, muscular, their arms and faces reddened by wind and sun, and they looked extremely tough in their thick shirts, cord trousers and heavy boots, with their
battered hats pulled down over their eyes and their rifles slung over their shoulders. They carried no gory carcasses, but this did not surprise me, for Brian had already explained that the deer
corpses are left where they fall. To try to keep pests such as deer or opossums under control would mean that the Wildlife Department would have to employ a colossal band of hunters who did nothing
else all day long. This, financially speaking was impossible, but there were many people who enjoyed hunting, and from these the department recruited their hunters, covered their out-of-pocket
expenses and let them hunt in whichever areas the pests were getting out of control. This deer hunt they had just returned from (not a very good one, apparently, for they had only managed to get
sixteen deer) thus fulfilled two purposes: they got the pleasure of hunting, and they were cutting down the deer population around the valley so that it did not get out of control and swamp the
Takahe out of existence permanently. Presently, full of food and tea, we sat back in front of the roaring fire (for the night was bitterly cold) and I opened one of the bottles of Scotch which I
had had the foresight to bring with us.

The next morning, stiff and cramped from the weird positions we had had to adopt on the floor of the hut all night, we got up and cooked breakfast. Outside, the valley was full of mist, so we
could not see more than a few feet from the hut door, but Brian seemed confident that this would rise as soon as the sun got up. Breakfast over, the deer hunters left us, trudging off through the
mists down the gorge towards Te Anau, where a boat was waiting for them. They had been pleasant company but we were glad to see them go, for it gave us just those few more spare inches of breathing
space in the hut that we felt we could do with.

Brian’s forecast was right, for by about eight o’clock the mist had lifted sufficiently for us to be able to see most of the lake and some of the surrounding mountains. It even began
to look as though it was going to be a fine day and so, full of high spirits, we set off along the edge of the lake towards the great meadow of snow grass where, Brian said, the first takahe nests
had been found. As I say, we set off in high spirits, for in that milky, opalescent light the lake seemed smaller than we had imagined and our destination a mere half hour’s stroll away. We
were soon to learn that Takahe Valley was deceptive. In the many years that I have been hunting for animals in various parts of the world, I can never remember being so acutely uncomfortable as I
was during our sojourn in Takahe Valley, and that first day was a pretty good sample of what any prospective takahe hunter has to put up with. To begin with there were the clouds: they would drift
over the edge of the mountains, take a look into the valley and decide that this was a suitable resting place, so they would pour themselves in like a slow-motion wave, enveloping both you and the
landscape and drenching you to the skin. This was one of the minor irritants. The snow grass, which grew in huge, waist high, barley-sugar coloured clumps, seemed to collect water with the
enthusiasm of a sponge and then, as you pushed through the clumps, this water would be shared with you in the most generous fashion. To add to the pleasure of all this, there was the sphagnum moss.
This thick, brilliant green moss grew like an extremely expensive fitted carpet around and between the snow grass clumps, looking as smooth as a bowling green and just as comfortable to walk on.
True, it was thick – about six or eight inches in places – and your feet sank into it as though it were a magnificent pile carpet, but once your feet had sunk into it, the moss was
reluctant to release its hold and it required quite an effort to extract one foot from the moss before you could take the next step. Just to make the whole thing more difficult, this mossy carpet
was, of course, growing on water, so that with every step you not only got a shoe full of water, but the sound of your feet being extricated from the moss resounded with a liquid plop that echoed
through the valley like a gunshot, and after half a mile of this I would not have thought there was a takahe within fifty miles that was not appraised of our arrival and progress. So, yard by yard,
we progressed along the side of the lake and through the meadow of snow grass. Occasionally we would leave the snow grass and make short sorties into the edge of the beech forest, for in the
non-breeding season the demarcation line where the snow grass reaches the forest seems to be a favourite haunt of the takahe. The dark, grey-green boles of the trees were covered with moisture, as
were the small, dull green leaves. Here and there the branches would be festooned with great, hanging masses of lichen, like some weird coral formation along the bough. At first sight this lichen
looked white – indeed, from a distance some of the trees looked as if they were covered with snow – but on close inspection the delicate, branched filigree was a very pale greeny-grey,
a delicate and rather beautiful colour.

For the rest of the day we plodded on through the damp snow grass and through the gloomy beech woods with their Martian growths of lichen. We were icy cold and drenched to the skin, and we found
just about everything except a takahe. We found fresh droppings at one stage and clustered round them with all the mixed feelings that Robinson Crusoe had when he discovered the famous footprint;
we found places where the birds had recently been feeding, shredding the long stalks of snow grass through the beaks; we even found empty nests, placed on the ground and constructed out of snow
grass, each one cunningly concealed under the drooping stalks of a massive clump of grass; Brian, at one point, even said that he
heard
a takahe, but as it was growing towards evening and
the valley was so silent you could hear a pin drop, we thought he was merely saying this to cheer us up. At length the weather started to close down on us and the light became too bad for
photography, even supposing there had been anything to photograph. We were right down the far end of the valley by now and Brian thought we ought to turn back for, as he pointed out cheerfully, if
a cloud descended into the valley suddenly we might well get lost and have to spend the night wandering round in ever-decreasing circles, up to our waists in wet snow grass. Spurred on by this
horrid thought, we retraced, with considerable distaste, our squishy footprints through the meadow and along the shores of the lake. When we reached the hut about which we had been so disparaging
the day before, we were so tired, cold, wet and dispirited that it seemed the very height of luxury. To be able to strip off our wet clothes and sit in front of a roaring log fire, gulping hot tea
liberally laced with whisky, was ecstasy, and we were soon telling ourselves that today had been an exception. The bad weather conditions had made the takahe more than normally secretive. The
following day, we assured each other, the valley would be so full of takahe that we would hardly be able to walk.

Our enthusiastic mood was somewhat marred, but not altogether shattered, when Jim’s wet socks (carefully hung on our improvised line over the fire to dry) fell with deadly accuracy into
the saucepan of soup that Brian was meditatively stirring. However, the soup seemed none the worse for the addition of this slightly macabre ingredient, and it gave Jim one more thing to complain
about, which he did with the utmost vigour.

The following morning the weather looked, if anything, slightly worse than it had the previous day; however, we climbed, shivering, into our still-moist clothes and set off along the shores of
the lake once again. Once more we reached the meadow and plunged into the icy grasp of the snow grass and sphagnum moss, and once more we found signs of takahe but did not get a glimpse of a bird.
By the time mid-afternoon came the weather was getting increasingly bad, and we were in a mood of the blackest depression. We knew we should have to leave the valley the following day and it seemed
heartbreaking to have come so far and to have got so wet and cold for nothing. It was not as if the birds were not there: the stripped snow grass we found was fresh, as were the droppings. The
wretched birds were obviously playing hide-and-seek with us, but in that type of country and in our sort of mood, we were not feeling like playing games. Then, just after I had slipped and fallen
heavily into a particularly glutinous patch of wet sphagnum moss, Brian suddenly held up his hand for silence. We stood there, hardly daring to breathe, while our feet sank slowly and steadily into
the moss.

‘What is it?’ I whispered at last.

‘Takahe,’ said Brian.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked, for I had heard nothing except the splash and squelch of my own fall.

‘Yes,’ said Brian. ‘Listen and you’ll hear them.’

We had been working our way along the edge of the valley, some twenty yards from where the beech forest started its precipitous climb up the mountainside and here the clumps of snow grass seemed
larger and grew more closely together than in other areas we had searched. We stood in a silent, frozen, dripping group and listened. Suddenly, to our right among the beech trees, we heard the
noise that Brian had heard. It was a deep, throbbing, drum-like noise, very similar to the noise that the wekas had made on Kapiti but magnified a hundredfold and with a rich, almost contralto
quality about it. There were some seven or eight rapid drum-beats, a brief silence, and then another series from a bit further away. Something else moved in the snow grass ahead of us and then
something else moved, nearer the beech forest. Oblivious of the struggles that Chris and Jim were having with camera and tripod, I drifted with Brian towards these movements. I say drifted because
this is what we tried to do, but to my over-sensitive ears our feet were making as much noise in the sphagnum moss as an exceptionally large troupe of hippopotami suffering from in-growing toenails
walking through a huge cauldron of extremely thick porridge. Gradually we got closer and closer to the spot where we had seen the movement, then the snow grass quivered again and we froze. After a
moment we moved forward cautiously, for the quiver had only been some twenty feet away from us. Again the grass moved, and I shifted my position slightly. Then, quite suddenly from behind a large
clump of snow grass, a takahe appeared.

I was completely taken aback for, only having seen black and white photographs of the takahe, I was imagining something about the size of an English moorhen, with the sombre, mottled plumage of
the weka, but there stood a bird the size of a large turkey – but more rotund in shape – and against the background of dark beech leaves and pale blonde snow grass, he glowed like a
jewel. He had a heavy, almost finch-like beak that, like his legs, was scarlet; his head and breast were a rich Mediterranean blue, and his back and wings a misty dragon green. He stood
straddle-legged among the snow grass, cocked his head at me and made his drumming noise. I gazed at him with admiration, and he looked back at me with the deepest suspicion. Presently, having
examined me carefully, he bobbed his head and then slowly and with immense dignity, he stepped carefully round a clump of snow grass and disappeared. What I should have done, of course, was to
remain still and he would probably have reappeared again, but so anxious was I not to lose sight of this magnificent bird that I took a few steps to the side to try and keep him in view. This was
my undoing. He gave a startled glance over his shoulder, uttered a deep grunt of alarm and started to run swiftly but slightly flat-footed towards the shelter of the beech trees. He disappeared
into the gloom of the trees and then all we could hear were surreptitious crackling and agitated drummings, but no amount of careful stalking on our part enabled us to catch another glimpse of the
birds.

By now the weather had closed down on us to such an extent that Brian insisted we make for the hut, so, cold and wet but happy that we had at last achieved success – however slight –
we wended our way through the snow grass and along the lake’s edge. We had nearly reached the end of the lake, and the warmth of the hut was within half a mile of us (we could see the curl of
welcoming smoke from the tall stack) when Brian turned and looked over his shoulder.

‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘that’s the sort of thing I didn’t want us to get caught in.’

At the very far end of the valley, just appearing over the rim of tree-covered mountains, was a great, grey fist of cloud. As we stood and watched, it curved over the mountain tops and then
poured down the sides into the valley with a speed that had to be seen to be believed. Within seconds the area in which we had seen the takahe had disappeared completely; within a few more seconds
the snow grass meadows at the other end of the lake had vanished under the muffling grey paw; then the cloud flattened out over the smooth lake surface and came racing towards us, swallowing up the
valley as it came. We got to the door of the hut as the first wisps started to coil and twist round us, and as we opened the door thankfully and looked back, Takahe Valley had been obliterated as
if it had never been there, and we were looking at a blank wall of swirling grey cloud. Taking it all round we agreed that we were extremely lucky not to have been caught at the other end of the
lake and so, while the cloud pressed coldly against the window of the hut, we piled the fire high with dry wood, stripped off our wet things and lay about in the pink glow of the flames, sipping
whisky and tea in equal proportions, all feeling vastly satisfied in an obscure way that we had seen the takahe and cheated the elements.