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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 …

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 …

It's been a while since I've gone down to the Waiwhakaio river mouth to do some bird photography but it was aclear morning yesterday so I headed out with my camera. The Waiwhakaio river mouth is one of the best spots for seeing birds in New Plymouth with a wide variety of shore birds as well as lots of finches, yellow hammer, silvereye, skylark and thrushes in the coastal scrub area.  I often see something unexpected. Yesterday it was a pair of Caspian tern which we don't see that ofte …

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 …

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 …