Bird photos - what else!

Well January has been and gone in a flash! Coincidentally I spent the last day of the month doing the same thing that I did on the first day of the month, taking photos of birds! I have been battling with my old camera for a while now and have been slowly saving up for a new one, this week it arrived and it has made my hobby so much more rewarding. I'm so used to coming home from visiting bird sanctuaries and being disappointed with the photos I got, bar one or two, so it was a nice change to come home and trawl through the over 1000 photos I took yesterday, and there are heaps of good ones! In saying that, I need practice holding a heavy camera and also need to figure out what settings work best in each scenario. Photographing birds can be tricky at times, lots of them tend to hide in trees, behind foliage and lots of my favourite birds prefer the dark, damp areas of the forest, making it near impossible to get decent photos of them. I still have yet to master the art of photographing birds in flight, I'll be reading up on tips I think. Another announcement is that I am going to Stewart Island for a short trip in March, I couldn't be more excited, I've been wanting to do this trip for so long and finally have booked it. There will be birds I have never seen before and South Island variations of my favourite North Island birds.

Well that's enough typing for now, here are my best pics from yesterday trip to Zealandia. I got there pretty early, it was a bit misty and rained a little, but I got to see the Kakariki (beautiful green birds) having their breakfast, it was so amazing to see so many of these lovely birds together, they are very rare and although I hear them fly over my house everyday, getting to see them in the flesh was amazing. I'm working on some drawings at the moment, and giving my shop a bit of a update so there'll be a blog about that soon.