I’ve been writing bits and pieces of blogs on expeditions and research trips, but they take time to finish and edit. So I’m going to do a few ‘experience’ blogs, about moments shared with birds over the past year.

Moss-bathing Mohua

Every now and then during my wanders on Ulva island, I’d be surrounded by a flurry of birds. Mixed flocks of mohua, pīpipi, tīeke and kākāriki, a chaos of chiming, chirruping, chuckling calls, all foraging together. They would work their way up, starting in the leaf-litter, then hop-hop-hopping up the tree trunks to the canopy. This time, once the main flock had passed through, there were straggling mohua, a little behind. I was standing at the top of a staircase, eye-level with a long swoop of curved branch that was coated in mosses. A bright gem of gold hopped along, pausing here and there, and then settled into a mossy little hollow along the branch. Twitching and fluttering in the way that house sparrows do when they dust-bathe, he proceeded to wash. It struck me as something I’d never thought of before, but made perfect sense. Moss-bathing. It’s these little insights into bird behaviour that I love, which makes them endlessly fascinating to me.

The light imperfect

Photography is all about light. For many photographers, the light is never right. Or the wind is in the wrong direction. Or the birds are in the wrong place. When you have only moments, brief times to spend in a place with the birds you want to photograph, you learn to work with what you are given, and make the best of it. Do I want photographs of spotted shags bathed in glorious golden morning light? Of course I do. Did I instead get a heavy grey morning in Riverton with persistent rain? Of course I did. But when the light decided to spear briefly through the clouds and illuminate the sea behind the birds, transforming it from limpid grey to spangling silver, I worked to get the image in front of me just right. Not what I wanted, not what I expected, but what was really there in the moment.

Children of the sky

To leap into the unknown, knowing the air beneath your wings will catch you and send you safely on, is the ultimate freedom. I spent hours standing at the lookout on Taiaroa Head, watching red-billed gulls, spotted and Otago shags, and the occasional Northern royal albatross soar on by. I was blue-finger frozen, blasted by winds that made my eyes pour continuously, snatched the breath out of my mouth, and coated me in salt spray from the churning sea against the cliffs below. And these birds were in their element. Wings wide to lift effortlessly into the air, tucked in to barrel downwind, angled to turn at speeds that strained my neck to follow – they were in their perfect environment. To me, it looked like they were revelling in it. The joy that comes with exercising the perfect form, bodies so well tuned to ride warm air-currents or howling gales, every feather aligned to purpose. It looks effortless. They know exactly how to fan their tails, tilt their primaries, ride the winds up into the atmosphere out over the raging sea. Birds don’t know what perfect feats of engineering they are, but I can appreciate it for them. With, perhaps, a little envy.