South Island Trip - Part 7 - Awakening an Owl

Day 3 of my South Island Trip was a bit of an exploring day. Hannah and I left our cruddy motel in Christchurch (it was so bad) and ventured south of Christchurch to explore some of the areas and visit a couple of gift shops/ galleries in the hopes of finding places to stock out work (this was a business trip after all). But trying to find birds was much more fun so we stopped at Lake Ellesmere and attempted to spot some interesting birds. We didn’t have much luck so quickly left the area and while on the way to Little River we spotted a sign to Manaia Reserve. We decided to check it out and it was pretty amazing, it was only a small patch of native bush was absolutely bustling full of birdlife. As we wandered through while listening to the sounds of Bellbirds and Tui, Hannah spotted a Morepork - Ruru - sleeping in nest box. We tried our best to be quiet but it was pretty wary of us and kept a close eye while obviously wanting to go back to sleep. We snapped a few photos then started walking again, before hearing what sounded like a boar (which freaked us out quite a bit, being in the middle of nowhere). We were in a bit of a hurry to get out of there by then. But we were lucky to stumble upon that little gem in the middle of nowhere, and got some nice Ruru photos to show for it!