Join the search for the world's rarest wading bird in New Zealand

Clouds move quickly across the Mackenzie Basin, dragging shadows over braided riverbeds and dry tussock plains that stretch towards New Zealand’s Southern Alps. One moment, the landscape is washed silver; the next, it disappears beneath a sweep of weather rolling over the mountains.

I’m heading deeper into this high country on a window of borrowed time, crossing the 46,950-acre wilderness of Glenmore Station, a merino sheep, deer and cattle station. Hours earlier, the same storm front had grounded my helicopter flight to the country’s highest whisky bar — The Bad Decision, on a saddle above Glenmore Station — before it could leave the tarmac. Now, I’m racing a temporary clearing in the weather to find something far more elusive than a dram of mountain liquor: the black stilt, or kakī in Māori, one of the rarest birds on the planet.

“The Mackenzie Basin has its own weather system,” says guide Ben Laffan, who’s taking me on Tekapo Adventures’ Black Stilt birding tour, a newly launched birdwatching experience, directing our four-wheel drive up a rough track. He founded Tekapo Adventures with his wife Cristina, and together they run outings from Tekapo township through private high-country stations in the basin. Ringed by mountain ranges on all sides, it’s normally sheltered from incoming weather, with storms breaking against the peaks before they reach the plains below. That’s not the case today — in four hours, rain will swallow it entirely, obscuring even the stars in the surrounding Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve for two nights.

For now, we scan the shallows for black stilts. Fewer than 200 adults remain in the wild, almost all within this region. They forage through wetlands and backwaters, probing for invertebrates with their long bills. “Their presence tells us the ecosystem is functioning, the water flows freely, the shingle beds remain intact,” says Ben, a Kiwi who splits his years guiding between the Southern Alps and British Columbia’s remote Coast Mountains. “If the kakī disappeared, it would mean more than the loss of a species — it would signal a decline in the health of the entire braided river system.”

He spots a pair in a tarn and we jump out of the car. I crouch instinctively as we move closer, stepping carefully through the long grass not to disturb them. Ben, meanwhile, is less worried. “There’s a reason there are so few left,” he says. “They didn’t evolve with predators. They don’t exactly have a fight-or-flight response.” It’s a heartbreaking evolutionary glitch, making them easy prey for introduced stoats, ferrets and feral cats. 

The kakī are smaller than I expected, similar in size to an oyster catcher, but more slender — delicate and fragile-looking against the monumental scale of the basin. With their stark black plumage and needle-thin, pinkish-red legs, they step daintily through the shallows. During the spring breeding season, Ben explains, the Department of Conservation monitors nesting pairs closely, removing eggs to raise chicks in a captive breeding programme before releasing them once strong enough to survive.

“We were regularly encountering kākī and other native birds while guiding here, and over time it became clear the birdlife should be the central focus, not just something you happen to see,” he says. “We launched a dedicated birding tour this year, to give guests time to observe ethically and understand the ecology behind what they’re seeing.”

We continue, tracking wetland edges where wildlife sightings are most likely. Ben reads the land as he drives — river splits, gravel bars, alpine channels. Spring (September through November in the Southern Hemisphere) is the best time to be out here. “The braided rivers fill with nesting and feeding species,” Ben says. “You’ll see black-fronted terns overhead, dotterels along the gravel banks and wrybills, the world’s only bird with a sideways-curving bill.”  Now, in mid-May, he spots soaring Kārearea (New Zealand falcon), and hears the harsh, rhythmic honking of paradise ducks before we see them. “They mate for life,” he notes of the pair.

He fell in love with the Mackenzie Basin after he started guiding here, and spent years building trust within the region’s tight-knit communities. Securing access to this private station has been a work of love, started as a series of kitchen-table conversations with its fourth-generation owners. “A lot of farmers are turning to tourism,” he explains. “It helps take the pressure off as their work gets more expensive, especially with the cost of fuel and fertiliser.”

This has opened up parts of the high country formerly closed to the public. Stations once entirely focused on sheep and beef are, in varying degrees, blending farming with small-scale visitor access, guided experiences and conservation work. Braemar Station, down the road near Lake Pukaki, offers luxury cottages and lodges, for example. At Glenmore Station, agritourism is only just beginning to take shape, with access tightly managed and tours required to stay on marked tracks across the land.

We use one to drop into the Cass River, its pale channels of water constantly splitting and rejoining across the valley floor. Along the grassy flats bordering the gravel, pregnant Angus cattle lift their heads to watch us pass. The light breaks through the clouds in thin, angled beams, catching on the ridgeline of a distant peak. Ben pulls out binoculars — he’s spotted a Himalayan Tahr on the mountain.

We arrive at a disused green farm hut behind a stream of glacial water. Ben steps out of the car, dunking mugs directly into the current. “The water’s pure,” he says, handing me one, “the best you’ll taste in New Zealand.” It’s bone-chillingly cold and sharp on the tongue. We stand by the stream, watching the afternoon light dance across the white-dusted mountain range. The silver light on the riverbeds turns a heavy, metallic grey; our brief window is closing.

“We should turn around before the rain comes,” Ben says. As the car races back, a sudden split tears through the overcast sky. Massive crepuscular rays — sunbeams passing through gaps in the clouds, often called ‘god rays’ — burst downward on the distant, turquoise water of Lake Tekapo. The high-country light shifts rapidly a few more times, cycling through brilliant gold and bruised purple, then the sky seals shut.