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Sandy Bay at Oanui is one of those rare spots on our coastline where a coastal reserve has been established and with the help of many hardworking volunteers, the rare coastal dune environment is being preserved and some of our threatened coastal birds given a chance to nest.  It also has great views back inland to the mountain though on many of my previous visits the mountain has been covered in cloud. On Friday morning, I woke early and saw that it was going to be a cold clear morning …

Sandy Bay is a small coastal reserve on the west Taranaki coast. It is an area of coastal dunes which has been protected and slowly restored by the Ngati Tara o Oanui Sandy Bay Conservation Society.  It is one of the few places on the Taranaki coastline where New Zealand Dotterel succesfully nest. There is a good variety of shore birds here and one of my favourite places to go for a bit of bird watching and photography.I headed off at dawn on Saturday morning and spent an absorbing couple o …

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 wher …

The Manawatu estuary is one of the best places for seeing shore birds and waders in the lower North Island. We recently had a one night stop over at Foxton beach on our way to Wellington so had a good chance to explore the estuary and see the wonderful variety of bird life that we just don't see in Taranaki. My favourite was the bar tailed godwit, a bird which I think is absolutely amazing with its extraordinary migration from Alaska to New Zealand.Next on my list is probably the Pacific golden …