Honey for breakfast

Today I thought long and hard about which of several photographs I should post, before I could decide.

As is common when the boys stay the night I was unable to get out for a run before they were awake. Dawn was breaking over the bay, and I went out with the Pentax. The second picture I took looked as if Kawau Island was on fire with spikes of red seemingly shooting up from the island. Very tempted to post that.

This afternoon I took the boys down to the beach below the cliff with a couple of balls. The tide had just started coming in from low tide so there was a very wide expanse of sand and racks, and they had a great time eventually getting totally soaked as they more or less went swimming. Before the battery ran out on the wee Panasonic I got some lovely pics.

So why have I chosen this picture of a tui? It is a picture taken while I was on my run this morning, and I have been trying to take a decent photo of a tui for months now, and succeeded just the once. Also, Young L is a fan of Winnie the Pooh, who accompanies him to bed when he stays at the Beach House. Pooh is known for having honey for tea, and any other meal he could manage it.

Mostly, I felt pleased that I had managed to time the exposure just right to get this very active bird actually with its beak in the flower of the Bottlebrush shrub, an Australian tree common enough in New Zealand gardens, and very popular with tui. Perhaps one reason they are now so common in the towns and cities.