Today is a public holiday so no work! Yay! We woke up to great weather so headed off to Zealandia for the morning. I had seen a photo of an Eastern Rosella nest with chicks and I wanted to find and photograph the nest if I could. It meant looking for the unknown which is always a crap shoot. None of the Zealandia staff knew where it was and the one person who did know, wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t the only one looking either, there were a bunch of other photographers there all with the same goal.
I didn’t find what I was looking for so as we were on one of the upper tracks, we headed to Discovery area where there is a feeding station for the Hihi (Stitchbird). It is quite a hike up a long flight of steps and by the time I reached the top of the stairs I was ready to sit with the birds for a while and relax. The hihi are quick movers with the male birds brighter in colour than the females. Trying to focus on fast moving objects became the challenge of the day. In the end I focused on the tree and waited. 
Hi Toya,
I’ve been following your fantastic blog here for a few weeks now. I came across your stunning photography after seeing your Tui pics on the Forest and Bird FB page late last year.
I love our birds and I have a go at photographing them with my little point and shoot. I
I also found you on FB tonight and see you are wondering about a pic of a red eyed bird, banded and with a native tree fruit in its beak. I would pick that it is a Bellbird. Grey Warblers are really tiny and only eat insects according to http://www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/grey-warbler
Grey warblers have skinny legs and your lovely bird has quite sturdy looking legs.
Your photos bring me a lot of enjoyment.
Thank you so much for your lovely comments and helping to clarify what the bird was. It is much appreciated.
I am pleased you get enjoyment out of my blog, feedback like that makes it worth doing 🙂
Cheers
Toya
Beautiful photos of a little treasure of a bird. Thank you so much for sharing them, Toya!