New Zealand Dotterel/Tuturiwhatu
I decided to go and look for the New Zealand dotterel or tuturiwhatu again at the Waiongana river mouth in the weekend and was lucky enough to find a pair hunting for food on the beach. Dotterel are fiesty little birds and don't seem to be too fazed by the presence of humans. These ones came up quite close to me, one of them to within a couple of meters getting inside the minimum focal length of my lense.
The Waiongana river mouth is one of the few places along the Taranaki coast where the dotterel are still successfully nesting. We get both NZ dotterel and banded dotterel here though I didn't see any banded dotterel during my visit in the weekend.
The following five shots are a sequence of a dotterel pulling up and swallowing a worm.
A close up - just before it got too close to focus on.
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