South Island Trip Part 1 - Blumine Island

I’m back home from an awesome 4 day South Island trip with Hannah Shand. We were both hoping to find some new stockists for our work, I was looking for nice gift shops, and Hannah was looking for galleries for her amazing original drawings and fine art prints. But naturally we wanted to see some South Island birds, so we booked a couple of trips, the first one being the e-ko tours Blumine and Motuara Islands in one day tour. The day started off very rainy, and continued to be very rainy, we were really gutted that our big birdwatching day was going to be miserable, but we tried to make the most of it and kept ourselves in good spirits. On the way to the Islands we saw a little roost of Spotted Shags, both in breeding plumage and also juvenile, and also some seals! Despite the bad weather, we saw a Black Phase Fantail, Pied Fantails, lots and lots of Bellbirds and Tui, Tomtits, Weka, and even one of the rarest birds in NZ, the Orange Fronted Kakariki (photos of that to come). Here are a few photos of the morning, I’ll be sharing more soon, I have a lot of photos to sort through!