Weka

Today was the first offical day back at work after almost 7 weeks of holidays. Teacher Only Day today which meant most of the day was spent on admin stuff. I walked into the staff room for the first meeting of the day and the volume and laughter were louder than when the kids are here. It's amazing but I swear 14 staff can make more noise than a school full of kids.

I took a photo of them all sitting around the meeting table and it was going to be my blip if I came up with nothing else throughout the day. Kiwilizzie wasn't too impressed about that because she took centre stage in the photo, so we went on blip hunt after work.

We drove up the Matakitaki valley to see what we could see. The sandflies were out in force and feasting on uncovered flesh so we were heading back to the car when I heard a noise and looked down to see a weka literally run across my foot - and I have proof as he left mud behind on my toes!

I dashed off a dozen photos before he could disappear and was feeling pretty chuffed that I would have something blippable when I looked down at the camera and realised that I still had it set for the sun on raindrops that I'd been photographing before that. Darn. Not a single shot useable.

Fortunately Mr Weka stuck around a bit and I managed to get a couple more photos on my hastily reset camera.

Then when we were driving back down the valley we saw a few more wekas dashing off the road in front of us. Eventually one was too young to realise how scary the car was, and he stuck around on the verge, undecided about what to do.

This is Master Weka, I liked it better than my shots of Mr Weka because of this wee chaps hunched stance and the tiny feather stuck in his beak - possibly more noticeable viewed large.

For those of you who are not kiwis, the weka is a large flightless bird, I believe related to the rail family. A fully growen one is about the size of a large chicken, though this youngster is not yet fully growen.