A Kiwi Christmas

Well, Christmas has been and gone so quickly, like it usually does. I went away for a couple of days to have Christmas with my Dad up in the lovely Bay of Plenty, it was a quick trip, but I managed to sneak in some bird watching. My dad appreciates the outdoors as much as I do so we walked some nice walks and visited a couple of beautiful places.

My Dads Avocado orchard, where I spotted a noisy little Grey Warbler amongst the trees and followed him around for a while. He didn't seem to mind and kept on singing as I tried to get some photos.

I even spotted this little bunny, such a cute little fluffy tail. They're a pest in NZ but still fun to see because it's not every day you come across a rabbit!

I witnessed a couple of nice sunsets, and was really drawn to the light through the far away trees on the hills. It's so peaceful at night time being out in the Rural parts of NZ, especially when listening to Morepork calling in the distance.

Not far from my Dads place is the Athenree Wildlife Refuge, a nice little estuary which is home to a few Pied Stilts as pictured below, Heron and other birds that I wasn't sure of, I need to do some research about our Shorebirds it seems.Visiting the beautiful Bowentown harbour is a ritual for me, I practically grew up in Waihi Beach, where my Grandparents live, and I know all the beaches around there like the back of my hand. There were so many Swallows fluttering around the Pohutukawa trees, unfortunately neither my reflexes or my camera were fast enough to get any decent photos of them! After visiting the harbour we went for a nice stroll along Bowentown beach and came across some Dotterel and Oyster Catchers. On the way to the airport we decided to stop at Miranda Shorebird Centre, we arrived much too late to see the majority of the birds, but saw a couple of beautiful White-Faced Herons, such elegant birds. I would really love to go back there at high tide and see all the shorebirds, I know a lot about our forest dwelling birds, but not much about our shore birds, something I would like to remedy. I'm planning a trip to Stewart Island sometime in the next month or two, and am so excited to see some South Island birds, as well as some Kiwi in the wild. I have lots of good stuff to look forward to next year.