After a night of thunder storm and rain, Sunday morning saw the sunshine return and promised to be a day worth spending time with the birds in nature. We grabbed the cameras and headed north to visit Nga Manu Nature Reserve. I went straight to the kakariki aviary, as I normally do to see the colourful parakeets. However the kakariki decided not to play and were tucked up asleep. After a quick look at where the light was, it was the tui that I went in search of instead.
Tui
Sunlight is brilliant for bringing out the amazing colours in the tui feathers. Stunning blues and greens with such vibrant iridescence. Tui are one of my favorite wild birds in nature to photograph, especially when I manage to get the lighting right.
Kereru
This kereru is blind in the other eye, so it tends to always pose with its good eye towards the camera. It is not at all vain, it just likes to see what is happening around it and knows that the area behind is inaccessible to the people in general. Like the tui, the kereru also has beautiful iridescent colours when the light is right.
Whio
One of New Zealand’s very special birds is the blue duck or whio. There is an active breeding programme in New Zealand to help the numbers of these birds increase. Unlike other ducks, they prefer to live near fast flowing water and are often hard to find in the wild. Nga Manu Nature Reserve has a breeding pair in a walk through aviary making it a little easier to capture images of these precious birds.
Korimako
Just as we were about to leave to head home, a very quick little bird flew past us. I am not sure what the tree was that it flew to, but the korimako / bellbird was very interested in the flowers. It was a little too fast and too high in the tree for me to capture a good image of but I didn’t feel this post would be finished without one, so enjoy.
