Hi There

I went for a walk stupidly early this morning and met this South Island Robin along the way. It was so dim in the bush that it was really hard to get a focus on him and get a decent photo.

Fortunately he clearly wanted me to photograph him because he kept just flying a few metres on up the track and then would wait for me to catch up before flying on again. One of the tricks with photographing these wee guys is that they are fairly brave and at times they come too close.

He must have stayed with us for a good 10 minutes just fluttering ahead and digging for insects in the leaf mulch. Of course this slowed my walk down considerably!

It was interesting because usually they'll follow you rather than lead, as they catch insects from the leaves you've disturbed as you walked on them.

Most of my photos are really poor, I just couldn't seem to get my settings suited - whenever I seemed to have them right he'd fly into a lighter or darker patch and I'd have to start again. *sigh*