Waiongana River Mouth

I had a wonderful walk along the coast from Bell Block beach to the Waiongana river mouth this morning. It's about an hours walk along the beach only accessible at low tide. You often have to cross several boulder fields but today they were all covered in sand making it an easy walk. It's a great section of cost to see birds with the Waiongana river mouth being home to a dotterel nesting site and with oyster catcher, white faced heron and shags nearly always somewhere along the coast on the reef or at the river mouth.

Today I was especially lucky getting to see a pair of caspian tern which is a fairly rare sighting along the New Plymouth coast line. I was also lucky to see a large flight of swans flying down the river, circling around and then coming in to land.

There were plenty of banded dotterel fossicking around in the rocks. I didn't want to disturb them so just sat quitly on a rock and watched them, After a bout 40 minute they all migrated to the area of rocks I was sitting in and I had about 8 birds surrounding me including about 3 juveniles. Really good to see that the colony is doing so well. Sadly, the council is planning on extending the coastal walkway along this section of coast which will give easy access to people (and dogs) to a nesting site that is currently thriving because of its relative remoteness.