New Zealand- Stewart & Ulva Islands

We went to the southernmost city in the south island and took a ferry over to Stewart Island. Stewart Island is off the mainland and has many small islands around it with huge bird populations. The Kiwi bird population is surviving on Stewart island because there are few people that live on the island and 85% of the island is national park. 20K Kiwi birds live on Stewart (give or take 10k). We spent over 10 + hours of night hiking in search of this elusive prehistoric bird (note this is after 10pm here). At the end of hiking for the 3rd evening out of shear desperation and being tired we used our car to drive around. We fortunately spotted one from the car; however we spooked it into the bush. We had a good enough view to confirm it was a Kiwi! Many New Zealanders have never seen Kiwi's because there are not many on the mainland and they have lost their habitat and they have invasive predators....rats, possums, cats, cars, etc.
About night hiking,,, I am in love. It is very mystical to walk through a forest at night. The bird and insect sounds are out of this world. We went to a peninsula one night to watch the Shortail Shear-water birds fly into the bush... It was so cool to see them crash into the bush than walk to their burrow. The other things we witnessed was a baby blue penguin waiting for his Mum to come home to the nest; and a possum in the dark.