The others...

Continuing on from yesterday’s blog post, today I have the other birds that visited the puddle of water that the waxeyes were playing in. Most were just using it as a drinking hole, clearly not wanting to wash in the same water as the little greenies.

Top Dog - The Starling

There were plenty of house sparrows about as usual and only one or two chaffinches. What was interesting from watching was the hierarchy of the bird species. The starlings have established themselves as the top dogs and will chase away anyone in their way. Followed closely by the blackbirds who believe this is their turf! The sparrows and chaffinch were the first (because they are quick and brave) and the last to feed after being chased off by the bigger birds.

The Blackbird

House Sparrow

Chaffinch

Pair of House Sparrows

Zealandia

Last Sunday there was a break in the weather for a short while so we headed off to Zealandia. It was still a bit windy but nothing like the day before. I am still getting the hang of using my big lens at Zealandia as it is quite dark in the bush. I ended up resorting to using flash in the end.

Birds in our front yard

The power went off at about 11.30am this morning and killed a lot of my plans for the day. So after cooking lunch on the camp stove I tossed out a couple of left over crusts to the birds. It was raining with gale force winds, so I really didn't expect the birds to be out - I was wrong. Within minutes there were sparrows and chaffinches flitting about the trees.

I also have a banana hanging in one of the trees with cut out windows in the skin. The waxeyes really love banana, so much so that even they came out in this foul weather. So what could I do? I just had to get out the camera. I was also suprised to see the waxeyes drinking rain drops off the tree branches.

Five hours later I finally got to see the photos that I had taken. The light was really bad making it hard to get a good shutter speed on the camera but I am happy with what I achieved. I had fun and that is the main thing!

Zealandia

The sun was shining and we had a few hours to spare so we headed off to Zealandia. I have a membership there so to get the most of the pass, I need to visit often. This was the first time I have taken my big lens to Zealandia and while I am still getting used to using the monopod, I did have some success. However by the end of the day I was shooting with it hand held. I need more practice at this but I did get a couple of sharp shots of the Takahe using this method.

Zealandia

The Trip to Napier

I am writing up the trip from back to front, not to confuse you but because that is how I am processing the photos. Upper Hutt to Clive, where we were staying, is a little over a four hour drive – it took us almost nine hours!  Not because we got lost or anything silly like that, but because we made lots of stops. We stopped in Greytown and had morning tea. Then we walked the main street to have a look at the shops. There were some really interesting shops there but we were strong and didn’t spend much. Just one small glass Christmas decoration was purchased to add to the tree this year. Our next stop was in Masterton, once again checking out the shops.

Kaka on flax

After Masterton we stopped in at Mt Bruce Reserve. We paid our $15 each and walked around the bush trying to photograph any birds we saw along our way. We weren’t much interested in the aviaries as it is too difficult to photograph them without the netting interfering with the shot. There were some fantails that followed us around, flitting from branch to branch staying just long enough for us to ALMOST focus on them, then moving again. Most frustrating! We saw plenty of tui but once again didn’t manage to get any decent images of them. So we gave up and had lunch in the café

Kaka feeding from flax flowers

It wasn’t until we were about to leave that we really had some fun with the cameras – out in the car park!! There were both kaka and tui feeding on the flax flowers right in the car park. We needn’t have spent the money to go in, we could have gotten all the shots we wanted right there in front of the building. We decided to try doing just that on the way home but unfortunately the weather had turned and the birds were no where to be seen.

We stopped to photograph a horse that looked like it was posing especially for us. It was still in the same position when we were driving home two days later. If we hadn’t seen it walk around the paddock we might have been thinking it wasn’t real! The last place we stopped before getting to Clive was Waipukurau where we once again walked about looking at the shops. They had some sort of a market day happening and each shop had a display from their favourite musical. Some of the staff had also dressed up into their chosen theme. By the time we finally reached the motel we were ready to collapse in front of the TV with a glass of wine and relax – and we did just that!