Blog

It's still officially winter, but the cherries have blossomed early and it seems like spring. The garden is full of birds with 30 or 40 tui in the cherry trees drinking nectar and chasing each other around. The tui are very territorial and defend the cherry trees chasing other birds out. A game of chase has developed between the tui and the silvereye.The tui tend to feed in the top of the tree and the silvereye keep sneaking into the bottom branches until the tui spot them and chase them out. Th …

I had a great mornings photography at the Waiwhakaio river mouth on Saturday.  After weeks of wet and unsettled weather we had a couple of fine days in a row with Saturday dawning fine and clear so I headed out just after sunrise. I was hoping to get some photos of a skylark.  Theres normally plenty of them about a the Waiwhakaio river mouth but they're fairly shy and so far I haven't managed any decent shots of them.Note: I've got a bit behind with putting new photos on the website. I …

Our cherry trees have blossomed a few weeks early this year bringing the tui in to feed. The tui typically start turning up a couple of weeks before the blossom opens, checking the trees out and staking out there territory. If the eastern rosella come in to feed on the buds then the tui will pretty quickly chase them off.  For the next two months our garden will be full of tui as the cherries all flower followed by the kowhai. We get 30 or 40 tui in the garden at a time chasing each other a …

We've got plenty of small birds in the garden at the moment. There always seems to be a flock of silvereye (tauhou) around somewhere either in the trees or in the hebes and there's always a couple of fantails (piwakawaka) flitting around.  More elusive are the grey warbler (riroriro) which I often see flitting around in the shadows but are much more difficult to photograph.  I always get a thrill when I get a good shot of a grey warbler, they never sit still and at best you get two sec …

Once you start appreciating beauty you see it everywhere, its surrounding us all the time. This is the New Plymouth forsehore at dusk with Paritutu rock and the Sugarloaf islands in dark silhouette providing the backdrop to the night lights of Port Taranaki and the city. At this time of year I get to see this view most evenings when I leave work and today I fianlly rembered to take my tripod in and capture these images. …