Birding on the Titi Islands

I’ve never been to the Titi Islands and I’m never likely to get there – certainly not for ‘birding’ – the annual harvest of titi or muttonbirds. You have to be a descendant of Rakiura Maori to be able to do that. Rakiura Maori are the sole kaitiaki (caretakers) of the Nga Moutere Titi, the 21 Titi Islands scattered around much larger Stewart Island in southern New Zealand waters. I did however get a few photographs of some of the more northern of the Titi Islands when I was crossing Foveaux Strait on the ferry recently on my return from Stewart Island.

The Titi Islands are one of the few places where customary harvest of birds has continued since Pakeha arrived and the customary rights of Rakiura Maori are now recognised in law. Titi, muttonbird, sooty shearwater, Puffinus griseus – they’re all the same – is a migratory seabird and the young birds caught by Maori as an annual delicacy are fat with the oils of the fish eaten and regurgitated by their parents. The parent birds come home every night, having eaten pilchards, shrimps, sprats and small squid and the young birds gobble down their oily dinner and grow very, very fat. (It’s no wonder they smell on cooking). Generations of families make the annual pilgrimage to the islands on April 1st and capture bird by reaching down into the bird’s underground burrow.

Photograph of display at DOC Information Centre, Stewart Island. Ajr

In the old days, titi were often preserved in a poha like the one pictured here. Inside the poha is a waterproof bag made of bull kelp. The birds were cooked and then placed in the bag in their own (cooked) fat (a process known as tahu). Air pockets were squeezed out by hand to create a vacuum seal that kept the food fresh for 2-3 years. That bag was protected by an outer wrapping of harakeke (flax), tied together with the bark of the totara tree.

Meet the People - 3

At Hokonui Marae, Feb 2009. Ajr

Meet the People – Contemporary Maori Doing Ordinary and Extraordinary Things – Margaret Bragg of Bluff is 75 years old and in all of those years, she has never once missed an annual titi (mutton bird) harvest. Margaret was just eight months old when she was first taken to Big Island, which is one of the mutton bird islands to the south-west of Stewart Island; and in the one year she missed visiting the island, she was actually ‘birding’ on another of the Titi Islands. Titi - also called muttonbird, sooty shearwater, Puffinus griseus – is a migratory seabird and the young birds caught by Maori as an annual delicacy on the Muttonbird Islands, southwest of Stewart Island, are fat with the oils of the fish eaten and regurgitated by their parents. The parent birds come home every night, having eaten pilchards, shrimps, sprats and small squid and the young birds gobble down their oily dinner and grow very, very fat. For Rakiura Maori (the only people permitted to hunt muttonbird on the islands), arrival there was always two weeks prior to the official start of titi hunting on April 1st. It was a time used by each family to chop wood, tidy up and make repairs to their little houses. And traditionally, they would have gathered kelp from the beaches back home, dried it and taken it with them to the islands where it was made into pouches to preserve the titi in. Like most ‘birders,’ Maureen eagerly awaits the titi season – she’s already booked her helicopter flight to the islands in fact; and she’s taken an active part on the Titi Committee. She has also worked as a Department of Conservation volunteer in the Saddleback Recovery Programme and takes great pride in the fact that the 29 saddlebacks released on Big Island back in 1964 have flourished and the programme has since re-distributed nearly 800 birds around the South Island.