south island tomtit

Orokonui Ecosanctuary

While at the Dunedin PSNZ National Convention, I attended the Orokonui Ecosanctuary field trip.  I was looking for birds that I had not photographed before, so when a delightful fantail started dancing around in front of me I politely ignored it and continued looking.  Thankfully I had two sets of eyes searching for birds – my husband came on the trip with me – so it wasn’t long before I was happily clicking away on the shutter button.  The South Island tomtit was on my list and this one posed beautifully for me.

The weather was very dull, so this made it very dark in the bush.  I was hoping to see a rifleman as they are often seen flitting between the trees at Orokonui, however I didn’t see any.  They remain on my list for future visits.  The South Island Kaka put on a great display for me though, so I managed a few images I was very pleased with.

The bellbird and tui are always great subjects to photograph and in this case I watched them at a feeder that was dripping with sugar water.  The droplets were falling and the birds were trying to drink them before they well – it was quite comical.  I don’t normally like getting bird images that are not in a natural setting but these were too good to miss.

I only did a short walk around Orokonui as we didn’t have a huge amount of time and there were a lot of photographers there.  I would love to go back on a quite day and just sit with the birds to see what comes out of hiding.  I think a road trip will be in the planning sometime in the future.

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