This poor post has been shunted back two weeks by the excitement of going to Tiri and Muriwai on the same day! It’s not every day that my lectures finish by 9am, but being whisked off to Miranda to spend the day with the family is a pretty fantastic way to spend the rest of it. Miranda is the destination for thousands of Bar-tailed Godwits that migrate annually from Alaska via China. It’s also a great place to see endemic Wrybills, among other native and migrant shorebirds. More information about the location and species can be found here. Dad and I visited the Shorebird Centre in the morning and also got some photographs of a White Heron – which is a first for me.

We returned to the hide on the shellbank in the afternoon in anticipation of a good evening of bird photography. While the clouds weren’t kind to us and we didn’t get the light we wanted, it was still productive. I had the most luck with Black-billed Gulls and Pied Stilts, and a Masked Lapwing. The birds were there in abundance – huge flocks of Bar-tailed Godwits were further out on the shore, Knots and Spoonbills here and there, and more Paradise Shellducks than you could shake a stick at.

As the wind grew bitter and the clouds reared up over the setting sun, we lost the prospect of getting the photos we had wanted – the flocks of Godwits flying from the shore where they forage to the saltmarsh pools where they spend the nights. We left and had dinner, and were later treated to a luminous fiery sunset as the last rays slipped through a gap to illuminate the heavy clouds that had halted our photography. Not a bad way to spend the day.

I’ll just have to return at some point to get flight photographs of the Bar-tailed Godwits!