Okarito Lagoon Eco Tour

Our group were second to do each of the tours today so we had time to spend in the morning hunting out more fernbirds.....Sadly, I failed!  BUT......there's hope....I'm learning more about their habits and calls so next time.....fingers crossed.

The Lagoon trip was awesome.  Whilst the boat operators felt that the water may be too low and the sun too high it really didn't matter.......saw a heap of birds doing what birds do.......As these trips tend to, it was over far too soon......though maybe judging by my burning face from a mix of sunshine, water reflection and wind, maybe not so!   

On then to the White Heron/Kotuku Sanctuary.  A 25 minute drive into Whataroa followed by a 30 minute drive in the tourist bus to the rather remote and hard-to-access colony.  Incredibly, it's the only known breeding place for Kotuku in New Zealand.  In the early days the nest numbers got as low as just 4 but conservation work has helped to raise the number to about 50 nests last year and 59 this year.  Again, rather incredibly, they estimate there are probably less than 200 Kotuku in New Zealand.  I say incredibly, because it's not really unusual to see a bird almost anywhere [?] around the country.   Anyway, picking just one image for today's blip proved to be too hard so I've opted for a montage of some of those we saw today.  

Fabulous day.......and rather tiring!