GIVE A PENGY A CHANCE

Our mates in the VRWC have been joshing with us all day. There have been about 1200 birds killed by the RENA oil slick. Our mates argue that while it seems a lot its not big in the scheme of things. Maybe they are right - they normally are. However we do  think that DOC needs a big thumbs up for co-ordinating the effort to save the pandas of NZ bird world  - The Dotterel. Its a sisyphean task that requires passion and dogged determination in the face of insurmountable odds.

They are funny wee birds that hide on the shore line and put their nests in the silliest of places. The go for bloody miles to find a feed and when the chips are down they will abandon their chicks and its not like they have a big brood - nope they only have a couple  or three at best. 

In essence they wiggled their fluffy arses just enough to make a wee indent in the sand and squeeze out a couple or three bumnuts. But just above the high tide zone is the equivalent of gang riven  Farmers Crescent.  Its hell out there.  All manner of predators  lurk there from skua, stoats and the heavy feet of hairy legged trampers. So what happens if the eggs or chicks get killed? Well the dotterels are persistent - they go and wiggle there wee botties and do it all over again.

So they are as succesful as parents as Sonny Bill Williams would be at trying to maintain a hard on in a locked room with only Helen Clark for company.

We reckon Dotterel  are  winged Pandas because despite the fact that they are deliriously cute, these little feathered moths  that flit almost undetectable on the sandy shore line - need human support to exist. So New Zealand, is  in essence, providing state support for the useless dotterel parents. What do NZ'ers get in return? bugger all as you cant see the wee buggers as they only thing they are much good at is camouflage.  However they would stick out like the balls on a St Bernard against the oil stained sand. 

You see our mates reckon that we have  had a far greater impact on the country's bird population - killing over 40,000 muttonbirds singletoothedly over our lifetime. That is very true. We are of course very old  so its taken nearly half a century to reach that figure. So while we have dispatched a lot of oily birds to eat  - the  RENA's oily slick  hasn't really eaten a lot of birds. 

However, we think that what is really worth saving is the little blue penguin.. The wee pengys never fail to raise a smile either on land or at sea. Gentle wee buggers  - efficient hunters and good mums and dads.  And they apparently taste like crap. 

We like that in a bird.

and what is our favourite Seabird? This one of course-  

The Mollymawk 

There is nothing that comes close to the grace of these birds and their amazing faces. 

They are welcome to come steal my fish anytime. 

A FAMILY GUY

This is a superb example of an old Hooker's Sealion Beach Master and one of  his mates  and a kid. He rules his domain fiercely. While we are on the muttonbird island they leave our beach and head for Small Craft about half a km away .. Then when we leave they go back to our island. Occasionally they visit us and growl and groan  and as in previous years they keep an eye out for when we set the greenbone net and after about 2 hours they thief all the fish. They are cunning enough to pull them out head first and can eat about 15 in  a few minutes. They are also quite at home deep in the bush and its nothing to find them 2km into the  big forest of Stewart Island  near a fresh water creek or river. Their Maori name is whakahao.

BIRDS OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER

During the past two weeks in the bay of a little muttonbird island at the entrance of Pegasus Harbour on the south east Coast of Stewart Island, we managed to get a few hours dingy fishing with a green line. We caught a few trumpter and a few more blue cod. But the biggest joy proved to be the mollymawks, as we know them, who sat about three feet from the dinghy waiting patiently for us to dong bony kelpie fish on the head and sling them overboard. The three or four birds that tracked the dinghy argued and scrapped over the titbits. But at the closing of the day, with drops of sea water on their silken feathers, the dying sun amplified the majestic beauty of the birds

WE ARE BACCCCK

And it appears some " mates have taken some liberties with Roarpawn... while we have been away indulging our primal need to kill little  fluffy chicks in a culturally appropriate way.   Be rest assured there will be no more crappy posts about Global warming...   

So while we have been away......  we understand that Hooton has been extending his business empire, Cactus has been shagging, Farrar has been - well we can only guess .... 

It seems Greece went belly up and  the arse fell out of Wall Street as well . 

 bugger all else happened apart from Southland getting a drenching. Mind you we only heard the news once a day  and that was Mary  - vinegar tits Wilson... on RNZ.    Seems it was the only time that we could get any reception at all. It was torture.

What we want to know is she rude to all people or does she save a special dose of her venom for those    who stutter? 

Her interview of Kiwirail Chief executive Jim  Quinn was deplorable.

TWO WEEKS OF CHICK CHATTER

This is  the noise we will hear at the muttonbird islands every night. You get used to it. It mainly occurs in the evening and the morning  as the parent bids communicate with the chicks. For the record we do not eat the eggs. Muttonbirds only lay one.  We harvest the chicks at night. This video, apart from the the error about eating eggs is cool. Sort of an avian Blair Witch project. 

HOOKERS

We share our muttonbird island with these smelly noisy beautiful majestic big buggers. They live in the bush as much as on the beach and will literally scare the crap out of you if you come across them in the dark. On land they are very aggressive. At sea they play. We have hand fed them mussels from a rock - they are highly intelligent and an endless source of amusement. They can clean out a gill net full with about 20 green bone in a matter of minutes. Video courtesy of Stewart Island Helicopters

COOL CHANGE

This is the boat that will take us to the muttonbird island and that's the helicopter that will take Ma and Pa down. It not our island shown but its very similar. And that's how we get our gear ashore. In the old days it used to take about ten dinghy loads.

Make a change from staring at a computer in my 5 x5 public service cubby hole every day.

IN DEEP

In about three weeks we are going to be here.

Its Ernest Island which is a  short swim to Stewart Island, one of the southern most and isolated muttonbird  islands and on a good day with the sun shining on the ebb tide and the fish biting, its kinda paradise. When the southerly comes up and your words are thiefed by a gale to disappear forever - its  hells next door neigbour .
And yes, those waters are so clear you hang over the end of the dinghy and watch the blue cod commit suicide on a rusty hook baited up with the arse of a muttonbird.


We have been commissioned to write a story on this years trip , which we will be taking with our 73 year old father, 69 year old mother and 28 year old son.

The story will be in a magazine called New Zealand Today - and the editor is an old work colleague, Allan Dick.
We will be without  a cellphone and there is no internet coverage. We can talk on  a VHF and in the past we have taken down a Satellite Phone, but it costs a bit  - last time it was $600 for 2 weeks.( if anyone wants to sponsor us  - please let us know!)

It will be hard work,  and fun and always brings us closer together as a family. We work and live together in very confined quarters - Our power is a generator, we have a coal range that needs all the love an attention of an expensive mistress to keep us a warm and fed.

We have a long drop  but we have a good shower. Well we did two years ago. The first few days are always spent gerry rigging the things that have broken or deteriorated without constant maintenence. Its one of the joys and challenges of the place. Getting by with what you have got at hand.

We will take our computer  and blog when we can  and then we will put them all up on Roarprawn when we get back about the 14th of May. We will be taking a video as well.

And yep we sell the birds we catch to defray expenses.  It will cost  the four of us over $2500 to get down  by boat and chopper from Bluff  and thats is not taking into account the $1000 dollars for me and the son to fly Air New Zealand. But its worth every godamn hard earned dollar it costs to get there.
The boat we are travelling on is skippered by Jack Topi, he is  the grandson of Peter Topi, my Uncle who along with  a bunch of our cousins was tragically drowned on the Kotuku back in 2006. "Big Teep"  as my Uncle was affectionately known, would be bloody proud of his grandson, in fact his whole family have done him proud. 

We are alos looking for some guest bloggers to keep the Roarprawn feeding the masses while we are out of range.
And if you want to buy some birds then contact us on bustedblonde@gmail.com

GLORIOUS FOOD

The Australian has a great yarn on the worlds best food experiences from readers.

this is our particular favourite

"While tootling around the far-north Japanese island of Hokkaido, one morning my husband I found ourselves on a windswept wharf, the fishing boats and trawlers tantalisingly empty. My husband, who possesses the food instincts of a gourmet bloodhound, pointed at a nondescript door, through which a few people came and went: "Let’s go in there". We entered a shopfront where glistening fish was piled high on ice – tiny, brilliant red prawns encrusted with bright blue roe, dinner-dish sized scallops, the prized starlight squid. After much pointing and gesturing, the fishmonger unfolded a card table, plonked it in the middle of the bare room, tipped some soy and a smudge of wasabi onto paper plates with a great pile of the prawns, and offered us tea made from the local, dried seaweed. The moral of the story? For one door to open, you sometimes have to knock on it."

For us, the following food memory is enduring.

On the coldest and windiest of nights over 45 years ago we would be sitting in the tiny "pluckhole" on the muttonbird (titi) island - a small square room in the workhouse, that fitted about 6 people all pulling the first layer of feathers from the fat titi. Occasionally the men would stop for a quick swig from a big bottle of beer, the women pausing for a sip of sweet tea from enamel mugs. All the time the men and women wove tales of the past to clothe us for the future.

With the last of their down still on the birds, they were passed out of the pluck hole and another group of men and women dipped the birds into hot water .With an ancient rhythmic swipe, the last fluffy undercoat disappeared from the titi leaving them clean naked . They were then hung from the rafters to dry.

In another corner of the workshed on an old range, a Kerosene tin rocked as it boiled away - full of muttonbirds simmering in nothing but a seawater broth. Its rangetop companions were an old black boiler of mussels steaming away, in their own juices. In a third pot, cod heads peeked out - looking like they were fleeing their only companion - an onion.

After a hundred or so birds had been plucked clean and hung to dry, old Maxy Skipper would pull down the pail of oily titi, the mussels and codheads putting them on the floor, the heady scents driving us crazy and we generations all, would sit around on beer crates and apple boxes, wipe our hands of the last of the feathers off on our overalls and dip in and grab a piece of bird or mussels or a cod head.
Faces and hands grease smeared, we grinned at each other in shared delight of the sublime and subtle flavours. Us kids loved to watch Maxy. He played the boiled birds like a harmonica - in one side of his chubby moosh went the oily legs of a bird and out the otherside came the cleaned white drumstick - all in the blink of an eye and the lick of his chops.

Poetry it was - poetry.

CLOTHING COMPANY FEELL ILL CHILL OF RECESSION

This is a bugger -NBR reports that Line 7 has gone into receivership. They are famous for good solid well made outdoor gear .

We have put some of that gear to the test at sea and on the muttonbird islands and its good rugged stuff lasts for bloody years.

They have also branched into fashion wear and cater for the well endowed sheilas like mois. I suggest that you take a look at their website they have some seriously reduced items on sale with 60% off - yip 60% off. And no we are not getting paid to promote it!

I have about 10 bits and pieces from their all weather outdoor gear and some fashion stuff.


Here's hoping the brand, that is linked to so many big sporting events, can be saved.

CALAMITY - AND PESTILENCE.

We have been blogging on this for a while.

It is arguably the worst muttonbird season in 45 years.

It affects many of our larger whanau.

It is a significant environmental event. Not unprecedented but significant.

RUMBLE WITH THE GRUMBLE

Well it appears that Grumble thinks he has a good plan for Busted Blonde to lose some weight. We don't get it. He has joined us up to PETA

Pamela Anderson fronts it from time to time , now we thought Grumble was promoting BB as the new front for PETA - we have the right assets.

But no, he reckons that we should be helping them with their PR after they tried to get Minister for Spider Bites

and Natures Flatulence, Nick Smith to support their cause by pleading with him to go vego.

Now we know that Nick Smith is no vego - he definitely does not like muttonbirds and we chewed his arse off one day and he definitely did not have a vege taste about him. So Peta was on to a loser from the start by asking Dr Smith to come to the aid of their banana loving rank and file.

Now Alf reckoned that eating veges and giving up meat would see us slim. Bollocks. We will trim the fat off our lamb chop and wriggle and giggle our way to Sweating with Socialists to get rid of the lard or our arse thank you very much.



And Alf had is wrong - we don't do PR. We are into Affairs - the more Public the better - Its says so on our card. PR is way too boring for us.

MUTTONBIRD SEASON A BAD ONE

<-------This pic is of the Helicopter on the beach of the muttonbird island we go to every year.

We blogged on early signs that this years Muttonbird harvest was going to be a bad one. Weather patterns appear to play a huge part in the parent birds ability to feed the chicks in the burrows on the islands.

As we feared it is a bad season. Birds are dying in the burrows and parent birds aren't visiting the island to feed the chicks. It happens. We can expect and see about one really bad season every decade. So all the climate change believers wont be able to blame this years bad breeding season on global bloody warming.Last year the chicks were huge and plentiful. This year they are not. Shit happens - it has happened before and we expect it to happen again.

Word is that some muttonbirders are already coming off the islands.

It is a sad place to be when the birds are dead and dying . The islands are spooky without the underground and overhead hustle and bustles of chicks and parents.

We may visit to check the place out. It will be a sad trip.

MUTTONBIRD SEASON NOT GOING TO BE GOOD

One of the most unique harvests in New Zealand is about to get underway on Wednesday but the news is not all that good.

Hundreds of Rakiura Maori, those with a blood right to exclusively harvest muttonbirds, are on or on their way to over 25 islands around Stewart Island. However the early signs are that this is not going to be a good season.

It is nature - and it happens at least once a decade. And the fluctuations are well recorded.

The crook seasons are cyclical as we have blogged before. Our family has a policy of not harvesting muttonbirds if the season is not looking good. I suppose some would call that conservation - we just call it common sense.

Some birders will go to the island's to check on their properties and make any repairs others will stay away . They only good thing is that a bad season with low numbers of chicks or chicks in poor conditions is always a precursor to a bloody good season. So if the early information is correct then next year will produce a bumper crop.

And while we may not go to our island this year our favourite Hooker Sealions will have the island all to themselves.

OF BIRDS, FAMILIES AND BUSINESS

We made a decision a couple of days ago to head to the muttonbird island with Ma and Pa - Dad is 72 and mum is coming up 69.

We love the island - it has a white sand beach , more often than not occupied by Hooker's Sealions and has some really good Blue Cod fishing patches. We can set a net for a feed of greenbone and dive for a feed of paua.
And then of course there is the muttonbird harvest itself - An ancient hunt that is locked into our genes despite the fact that the last full blood Ngai Tahu was 6 generations back. Go figure.

Anyway after all the crap between the factions who are fighting for supremacy at the Ngai Tahu governing body Te Runanga O Ngai Tahu we think that for the last ten years TRONT, as it is known, has done bugger all for us. Then again we never expected it to. We receive regular monthly newsletters about what each runanga is doing and we find that a good way to find out just what the cousins are doing at home. They are the Ahi Kaa - the ones who keep the home fires burning.

And we get the less frequent Te Karaka - which is a glossy mag that looks at some of the achievements of the tribe. There are some good ones.

And then there is Whai Rawa the Ngai Tahu Superannuation Fund. It will be interesting to see how this is managed in these financially troubled times.
Oh and dad gets a few hundred dollars at Xmas for being an old Ngai Tahu bugger - and being on a pension he looks forward to a wee bit of spare cash.
So not a lot in it for us really. But back to the muttonbird islands.

Our business is strong enough that we can afford to take ten days off and fly there and back in a chopper.

We have worked long and hard to get to that position. We have often wondered if Ngai Tahu would come calling for our business expertise but they never have - we reckon its because we don't do sychophancy very well.

Our focus of the next 6 weeks will be getting fit for the Muttonbird season, that is going to be a very big ask because , not to put too finer point on it,we are way too big.

It may well be the last year for us - Mum and Dad will probably put our little family hut and work house up for sale. So despite all the things the tribe is doing the only real payback we have had from being Ngai Tahu is that it has allowed us to go the island, harvest muttonbirds, practice all the things that have been handed down over generations, and build up a very small asset.
And its for the likes of the two boys in the top picture - one is son of BB and a helicopter pilot/instructor and the other is cousin Storm a young fisherman - one of the stars of the Million dollar Catch.

Both of them have got to where they are without the help of the tribe.

Somehow that seems so much more impressive than building $52million dollar office blocks with money that was given by the government for the wrongs perpetrated on a previous generation.
This generation didn't earn it and now it cant even play with it nicely.

Maybe its time for those at the table to go out and spend some time making money in the real world where the only dollar you get to spend is the one you earn.

BLOOD RIGHTS

We southern natives have a comprehensive set of rules and regs that protect our harvesting rights to take muttonbirds.
This story was first broken by TVNZ. Now the Southland Times has gone digging


A simplification is that a bunch of chiefs did a deal with the government to sell of Stewart Island and most of the surrounding islands. They kept a few muttonbird islands for their relatives. They are known as Beneficial Islands. Their descendants were effectively given a property right. While they were doing the deal, many others were actually on the islands catching birds - so they came back to find in many of the islands they had traditionally birded had literally been sold without their knowledge. Those people petitioned the government who saw the injustice and allowed the birders to use the wrongly sold islands in perpetuity. They are known as the Crown Islands. Then when Ngai Tahu completed its treaty settlement deal with the government , a core part of the settlement was the return of the Crown Islands. Once both sets of the islands were administered under one body - now there are two.

Family feuds and arguments over rights to the beneficial islands have festered for generations.
Whakapapa must be proved and it appears now that there are some issues over just who is descended from whom.

This issue is not small, it affects about 100 families who guard their rights with passion.
It is to be hoped that wise and benevolent heads of the new leaders of Rakiura Maori can chart a way through what will be be some very stormy waters.

Kia Kaha cousins.

ROUND UP

• Which top journo who tried PR and was good at it, decided after a particularly amoral decision by his employers to return to the side of the angels?

All we will say is power to the people.

• Which Ex MP is up on fraud charges?

• Is it true that Paula Bennett has been offered a fight for life contract?

• Who else wants to say "no we f****kn wont" every time they hear Barry Obama say "Yes we can?"

• While everyone is worrying about access to beaches some Maori are having trouble agreeing amongst themselves who has rights to the land and harvests in the deep south

Watch that space - its all about who was here first, who dares and who wins.

WHALE OIL THINKS GOOGLE IS CLEVER - WE THINK MUTTONBIRDS ARE

Whale oil waxes on about how cool it is that Google data is now so extensive it is being used as a tool to predict flu epidemics.

It is clever but muttonbird harvest also provide us with unique predictions on weather patterns.

You see Titi ( muttonbird) harvests fluctuate . some years they are fat and abundant - and other years skinny and scarce. A birder had a diary that went back 50 years that recorded the harvest and it showed a clear correlation between the arrival of El Nino and El Nina Weather patterns.

This is all I could find on the Net - its from Otago University who have been studying Titi for about 15 years.

Climate-related patterns in titi harvest rates: Birders' diairies have been

analysed for trends in harvest rates and practices. Analysis of a 20-year plus

record of harvest information from a birder's diary led to the very significant

discovery of a strong link between titi harvest rates and ENSO weather

patterns. This statistical analysis was corroborated by birders' traditional

knowledge regarding long-term trends in titi abundance. Other diaries and

data sources are being examined to confirm the large-scale nature of this

finding.

Since then the correlation has been corroborated further.

So wee fluffy yummy birdies are just as good as bigger than big google at prediction.

WE HAVE BEEN TAGGED

BB has been home crook with the flu for three days. Hence the blogging.

Now we have been tagged by M and M this means I have to tell you 7 things you wouldn't know about me.

1 - I have a deformed ear.
2 - I had a trick pony called Lancer who used to rear and kneel down on command
3 - I have killed approx 40,000 muttonbirds by crushing their brains with my teeth severing the brain from the brain stem causing instantaneous death. Consequently one of my back bicuspids is buggered.
4 - I co-negotiated a $11.2m Maori land settlement package on land that wasn't our family's - and got paid $210 for it.
5 - I once wrote a press release about extracting semen from bees
6 - I do cross stitch because it is relaxing
7 - blue cod livers are my favourite seafood - but they do have the propensity to make you fart.

so the rules are

• Link to the person who tagged you
• Post the rules
• Share seven random or weird facts about yourself
• Tag 7 random people at the end of the post with their links

SO NOW i TAG
MWT
macdoctor
Inquiring mind
dear john
big news
poneke
jafapete