A DIFFERENT TUNE

On New Zealand’s wild and lush North Island, SARAH MOSS journeys through snowcapped mountain ranges and tranquil vineyards—following the sound of exotic birdsong all the way.

- SARAH MOSS

OUR FIRST NIGHT in New Zealand, there was hooting in the darkest hours, from nearer and farther around the flowering gardens of suburban Auckland. Come dawn, more of a chorale than a chorus. I got up, leaving my 12-year-old son, Felix, sleeping the sleep of the jet-lagged preteen , and ran along streets of pastel-painted wooden houses, down through a park whose trees I couldn’t name, to the shore of the Pacific Ocean, which I was seeing for the fi rst time.

I was making stops in Auckland and Wellington on a book tour , and had decided to slip a week’s vacation with Felix in between. We took the train 644 kilometres across the North Island , with a visit to Tongariro National Park along the way. There were some locals onboard the Northern Explorer—one couple attending a high school reunion and another, greeted by name by the guard, on their way to visit grandchildren—but it’s mostly a tourist line, leisurely and comfortable, offered as an experience of landscape as much as an efficient mode of transport. Carriage windows curve up to the roof, and there’s an outdoor viewing platform where you can rush from side to side, wind in hair and camera in hand, as mountain ranges rise and woodlands pass at a speed compatible with bird-spotting . We had a bird book, and learned that the large, blue-breasted swamphens puttering around the shrubs lining the tracks were known as pukeko. There were starlings and sparrows like the ones we have back home in England . Nineteenth-century Brits devoted unconscionable energy to making New Zealand look like home, and at a cursory glance farming areas could be the Cotswolds or the Yorkshire Dales. But then comes an outburst of cabbage trees or a gathering of hopbushes, the rise of bright wings, and always that birdsong .