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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 …

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 at Foxton beach is one of the best places in the lower North Island to see a variety of shore birds and waders. It's one of the places were our Arctic migrants can regularly be seen over summer including the bar tailed godwit, Pacific golden plover and lesser knots.The photos below are from a brief visit on my way down to Wellington at the end of March. All photos were taken with the new Nikor 500mm f5.6 PF lense fitted with a 1.4 teleconverter.A white fronted tern ( …

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 …