Kuaka, the Bar Tailed Godwit
I was lucky enought to get some good photos of bar tailed godwit on our recent stay at the Manawatu estuary. Godwits are an amazing bird completing one of the most extraordinary migration patterns of any bird migrating from Alaska where they breed to New Zealand where they spend the summer restocking, building themselves up before returning to Alaska for the next breeding season.
They typically arrive here in September after an 8 to 9 day non stop flight and can be seen feeding in the mud flats at many of our coastal estuaries. Come March they start heading off again, first to the yellow sea on the along the coast of China and North Korea to refuel and then on to Alaska though many younger birds (non breeding) remain to overwinter here in New Zealand. Sadly, their numbers are slowly declining which is mainly thought to be due to habitat loss - particularly at their stop over point in China.
Anyway - here's my collection of kuaka/godwit photos from the Manawatu estuary.
This is a sequence of 6 shots of a Godwit doing a low level flyby.
the view you get when you get to close and scare them off.
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