I stumbled a little woozily up the beach, clambering over the boulders of quietly hallucinatory colours, and then from my new vantage point saw Mark away in the distance on his knees and peering into an old log.
‘Moulting little blue penguin,’ he said when at last I reached him.
`What? I said. ‘Where?
‘In the log,’ he said. ‘Look.’
I peered into the log. A small pair of black eyes peered anxiously back at me from out of a dark ball of ruffled blue fluff.
I sat back heavily on a rock.
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Where are we?
Mark grinned. ‘I thought you seemed a bit jet-lagged,’ he said. ‘You’ve been asleep for about twenty minutes.’
‘OK,’ I said, irritably, ‘but where are we? I think I’ve narrowed it down to New Zealand.’
‘Little Barrier Island,’ he said. ‘Remember? We came here this morning by helicopter.’
‘Ah,’ l said, ‘so that answers my next question. It’s the afternoon, yes?
‘Yes,’ said Mark. ‘It’s about four o’clock and we are expected for tea.’
I looked up and down the beach again, thunderstruck by this idea.’
‘Tea?’ I said.
°With Mike and Dobby.’
‘Well just pretend you know them when we get there because you spent an hour chatting to them this morning.’
‘I did?
‘Dobby is the warden of the island.’
`And Mike??
‘His wife.’
‘I see.’ I thought for a bit. ‘I know,’ I said, suddenly. ‘We’ve come to look for the kakapo. Yes?
‘Correct.’
`Will we find one here?’
‘Doubt it.’
`Then remind me. Why are we here?
‘Because this is one of the only two places where there are definitely kakapos living.’
‘But we probably won’t find one.’
No.
`But we will at least get some tea.’
`Yes.’
`Well, let’s go and get some. Tell me all about it again on the way. But slowly.’
‘OK,’ said Mark. He took a few last pictures of the little blue penguin, a bird which I was destined never to find out anything more about, packed away his Nikons, and together we set off back to the warden’s lodge.
‘Now that New Zealand is riddled with predators of all kinds,’ said Mark, `the only possible refuge for kakapos is on islands -and protected islands at that. Stewart Island, in the south, where one or two kakapos are still found, is inhabited and no longer even remotely safe. Any kakapos that are found there are trapped and airlifted to Codfish Island which is just nearby. They are studied and protected there. In fact they are so well protected that there’s a certain amount of doubt at the moment about whether we’ll even be allowed to go there. Apparently there’s some furore going on at DOC about…’
`The New Zealand Department of Conservation. There’s a disagreement about whether to let us go there. On the one hand there’s a feeling that we might do some good by getting some publicity for the project, and on the other there’s a feeling that the birds should not be disturbed on any account. There’s only one person available who could help us find the bird and he doesn’t want to take us at all.’
‘Who is he?
‘A freelance kakapo tracker called Arab.’
‘I see.’
‘He has a kakapo-tracking dog.’
‘Hmm. Sounds like the sort of person we need. Is there a lot of work for freelance kakapo trackers? I mean, there aren’t a lot of kakapos to track, are there?
‘Forty. In fact there are three or four kakapo trackers…’
‘And three or four kakapo-tracking dogs?
‘Exactly. The dogs are specially trained to sniff out the kakapos. They wear muzzles so that they won’t harm the birds. They’ve been used to trap the kakapos on Stewart Island so that they can then be airlifted to Codfish Island and here to Little Barrier Island by helicopter. First time any of the species have flown at all for thousands, perhaps millions, of years.’
`What does a kakapo tracker do when there aren’t any kakapos that need tracking?
‘Kills cats.’
‘Out of frustration?
‘No. Codfish Island was infested with feral cats. In other words cats that have returned to the wild.’
‘I always think that’s an artificial distinction. I think all cats are wild cats. They just act tame if they think they’ll get a saucer of milk out of it. So they kill cats on Codfish Island?