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Piwakawaka or fantail have always been one of my favourite native birds. I have many memories as a child of sitting under the trees in my grandparents garden watching the fantails flitting about. We have fantail in our garden most of the time often coming around and investigating when I'm gardening but mysteriously disappearing when I go outside with a camera.  They are tricky little birds to get good photos of because they are always on the move and rarely sit still for more than a fe …

The Pauatahanui wildlife reserve is becoming a great haven on Wellingtons doorstep for wetland birds. The pest eradication campaigns by DOC and Fores & Bird are showing great results which has enabled fernbirds to be translocated and established as well as other rare wetland birds such as the spotless crake and banded rail now turning up and moving in.I got the chance to spend a couple of mornings here during a recent visit to Wellington and though I didn't manage to see the spotless crakes or b …

Last year nikon released a new 500mm lense using phase fresnel technology to create a more compact telephoto lense. It had good reviews so I ordered one at the beginning of October 2018. Five months later it has finally turned up after a long wait as worldwide demand immediately outstripped supply.  Naturally I've immediately been out to see how it performs and must say I'm really impressed by the results.  It's light weight and compact and fast to lock onto its focus. I'm pretty pleas …

It's still officially winter, but the cherries have blossomed early and it seems like spring. The garden is full of birds with 30 or 40 tui in the cherry trees drinking nectar and chasing each other around. The tui are very territorial and defend the cherry trees chasing other birds out. A game of chase has developed between the tui and the silvereye.The tui tend to feed in the top of the tree and the silvereye keep sneaking into the bottom branches until the tui spot them and chase them out. Th …

We've got plenty of small birds in the garden at the moment. There always seems to be a flock of silvereye (tauhou) around somewhere either in the trees or in the hebes and there's always a couple of fantails (piwakawaka) flitting around.  More elusive are the grey warbler (riroriro) which I often see flitting around in the shadows but are much more difficult to photograph.  I always get a thrill when I get a good shot of a grey warbler, they never sit still and at best you get two sec …