T2 retiring from public duty

We went to Zealandia yesterday just in time to get some last images of T2 the Takahē before he is moved to a quiet area of the sanctuary for his retirement.  At 23 years old and having recently lost his mate Puffin, he deserves to be looked after and be away from all the visitors. I am creating a page for T2 on my site with more of yesterday’s images. It can be viewed here.I was told that there was a lot of activity with the birds around the sanctuary and that Spring was very much in the air, but I think most of the birds got the memo that I was visiting, so took the day off. We really didn’t see a lot of birds.  The tuatara were out even though it was quite chilly in the shade, we saw three as we walked past.We had a little robin follow us around for a bit, but cleverly managed to stay too close to the lens for me to capture more than a couple of images.  It was very cute and friendly though. We also saw one male hihi at the kaka feeders – there were no kaka there at the time. A bellbird sang to us before swooping past out of sight – no image of that either.On the walk back to the visitor centre we did encounter some kaka and I did manage to capture some images of them. We also saw the pateke ducklings of which seven have survived and are about half the size of the adult birds now.  An impressive number to have survived, perhaps there really is safety in numbers.The last bird of the day was the kereru.  Again I was reliably told that numbers of kereru had grown substantially this year and they were everywhere to be seen.  We saw one, but while it might have missed the memo that the others got, it did pose nicely for me.

Ok so looking at these images I guess I did see a lot of birds, it just seemed like there wasn’t as many as I have seen in the past.  I will have to return in a few weeks when Spring really is here!

 

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