Blog

We are very much blessed with the public reserves and parks in New Plymouth with Pukekura park being one of the best. It's a beautiful and picturesque park with the lakes and bush walks up into the valley past the bowl of brooklands.  There's plenty of bird life about and I nearly always take a camera when Catherine and I go for a walk there. We often stop to watch the sparrows bathing in the water lillies on the lake at the bowl of brooklands. Yesterday three goldfinch turned up and joined …

One of the best places to see a variety of birds in New Plymouth is the Waiwhakaio river mouth.  As well as waders, shags and sea birds there is nearly always a good variety of small birds around in the tussock and scrub including silvereye, gold finch, green finch, dunnock, yellow hammer and skylarks.  On saturday morning I headed down there again get some more shots with my new nikor 500mm lense.One of my first shots of the morning, a black shag (kawau), lifting off from the water.A …

I had a great mornings photography at the Waiwhakaio river mouth on Saturday.  After weeks of wet and unsettled weather we had a couple of fine days in a row with Saturday dawning fine and clear so I headed out just after sunrise. I was hoping to get some photos of a skylark.  Theres normally plenty of them about a the Waiwhakaio river mouth but they're fairly shy and so far I haven't managed any decent shots of them.Note: I've got a bit behind with putting new photos on the website. I …

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 …