One adventure I’ve been on this year is my visit to Pūkaha (also known as Mt Bruce) in the Wairarapa. Pūkaha is an unfenced sanctuary famous for it’s kokako and it’s white kiwi, Manukura. My aim was to see some Tomtits when I visited, but I ended up getting distracted by all the tītipounamu/Rifleman! They were absolutely everywhere, it seemed like I walked out of one territory straight into the next. I first heard one right close to the visitor centre and that set the tone for the day.
I walked up over the lookout, it was hot work but worth it, but once I got up there I forgot to take photos of the view, oops. I did manage to see a couple of Tomtits, one very young one, and an adult female later on in the day. It would have been rude to ignore the Rifleman, so naturally I took lots and lots of photos of them. It was much easier to find them than at Zealandia, but they were very high up in the canopy, so getting photos was tricky. Nonetheless here are the photos I managed to get from the day!
