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One of my favourite New Zealand shorebirds is the NZ Dotterel or tuturiwhatu. They're friendly inquisitive birds but also feisty when defending their nest or young. We only have a few locations left now on the Taranaki coastline where they can still nest and most of these sites aren't protected. The best location, where there is normally 2 or 3 pairs, is at Sandy Bay near Oanui where they are in a protected reserve with a team of dedicated locals perfoming pest control.Despite the poor weather f …

On Friday morning I headed off to the Waiongana river mouth to check up on the NZ dotterels. These are wonderful little shore birds now only found in a few locations along the Taranaki coastline due to coastal development and human activity.  The tide was out and it took me a while to spot were they were foraging amongst the rocks. Once I did spot them I carefully headed out slowly getting as close as I dared not wanting to disturb them. There was a group of 3 and after a few minutes t …

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 …

Every day, the extraordinary beauty of this existence opens herself upand gives herself as a giftLet's work together to preserve that gift.We've had a couple of clear fine mid winter days with a new fall of snow on the mountain. Frosty mornings and cold days with Taranaki standing out crisp and clear in the winter sunshine.  I went for a walk along the beach from Bell Block to the Waiongana river mouth at low tide yesterday hoping to find some New Zealand dotterel which have a nesting site …