The days are getting longer. The weather is a mercurial mix of thunderstorms and sunshine, and trees like kōwhai and karo are heaving out flowers. The tūī are loving it. Every day I hear more riroriro singing, even in the middle of Auckland city at the university campus.

I spend a few days on Te Hauturu-o-Toi (Little Barrier Island) and Mauimua/Motumuka (Lady Alice Island), helping out with the New Zealand Storm petrel project and then working on my own research, respectively. It pours with rain. On Hauturu we have 75mm of rain in 24 hours, and the rivers all flood. We scramble up valley slopes in the deluge, placing recorders to hopefully capture storm-petrel serenades in the coming season.

We land on Mauimua in glorious sun, but a front is chasing us. It greys over. All afternoon, the sky is full of rolling boulders as thunder shakes out of the clouds. It’s enveloping, I can feel it resonating in my chest every time another rumble begins. The sky flashes sporadically, but most of the bolts are back towards the mainland, tracing over the blurry outline of Bream Head. We are drenched for an hour, but then the thunder quietens and the rain fades. That evening, the huge mass of the storm is still visible out to sea, flashing silently in the distance as stars burn overhead.

We’re listening for the raucous laughter of pakahā, fluttering shearwaters. They’re one of three species I’m studying for my PhD, and they’re surprisingly cryptic birds. Progressively earlier morning forays (4am, 2:30am) reveal that they’re most active around 3 in the morning, as they start to leave the colony. The low coastal scrub vibrates with their wild chuckles, and the raspier tones of little shearwaters. I mark burrow after burrow with reflective rope, so I can find them again in the dark.

There have to be more flutterers than we’ve found so far, so we spend a day hiking around the island, affixing sound recorders to trees. It’s a slush of mud and trampled kōwahi flowers, which carpet the forest floor in gold. Tūī and korimako fight over the sweet nectar. Tīeke chatter in pairs, their strident calls giving way to a quiet fluting when they converse together. A tiny riroriro hops through the canopy, from branch to branch, down towards me. It stops at eye level, and flits around my head. I’m breathless. There’s so much life out here.

I’m back in the city, scrubbed clean and wrapped up against a sudden and fierce southerly. The sun is glorious. And in Unity Books, tucked into the natural history corner, is a stack of The Brilliance of Birds, just waiting to be picked up by whoever is as fascinated by these wonderful creatures as I am. I can hardly believe it. But there it is – a two year marathon, condensed into one solid hardback with a copper-foiled cover.