New Zealand wedding number one

Mischievous Kea

We've been over to New Zealand twice in the last month. Emily has a long list of cousins of marrying age and so it's always nice to get over there for a good wedding now and again.

Banks Peninsula

Holiday house

Wedding number one was down on the South Island on Banks Peninsula next to Christchurch. Emily and I also took the opportunity to spend a few days on the west coast again for a bit of kayaking and kiwi hunting. One can indulge in both of those pastimes at the township of Okarito. Kayaking is great fun on the lagoon by day and then, after dark, you head out into the forest with a guide, two-way radios, electronic tracking equipment and red torches to find New Zealand's rarest kiwi - the Okarito Brown Kiwi. The tour boasts a 95% success rate but sadly we were the 1-in-20. It was still great entertainment though. It's pitch black and thick undergrowth and so you only see the birds if they actually step out onto the path right in front of you. You have to be silently waiting at that precise point of the track and so it's all about tracking their movement and predicting where they're going to emerge. We had one bird snuffling only a few metres in front of us and another calling loudly close by but neither made that final step into the open.

 Rare west coast sunshine at Jackson Bay

My favourite west coast native - Weka

Back over on Banks Peninsula we put our fishing gear to good use and lobbed a few prawns off the rocks. Local anglers would have been very frustrated with it all I'm sure but we had a load of fun catching lots of Spotted Wrasse. The 'Spotty' is apparently a real pest and swarms of them stop your bait getting to the proper big stuff but I don't care about that. A fish is a fish and noone was drawing a blank.

Spotted Wrasse (male)

Spotted Wrasse (female)

The fishing was certainly more fun than the general birding as New Zealand once again put forward a strong case for World's worst bird-watching destination. Despite visiting a few wetlands, estuaries, sewage treatment plants and woodlands, I could only add the Australasian Shoveler NZ#70 to my paltry list.