Sorry for the late post, I’ve been in an internet-less state since I moved up to Auckland, but we’re sorted now!
Dad and I took the last week of my holiday off work so that we could do some fun things before I had to go back to University; things we’d been meaning to do, but hadn’t got around to for a while. A few years ago we went on a “Wild Duck Hunt” to find one of New Zealand’s more elusive natives, the Blue Duck. We spent some time on the Tongariro River looking, but only saw quails.
We also tried the Ruatiti, and while we were successful in seeing them, that was about as far as we got. In the intervening time, Dad has been back to Ruatiti and been extremely fortunate to have them swimming around quite close to him, completely unconcerned with his presence; it just shows you how being in the right place at the right time can work wonders.
This time we went to stay by the Ruatiti for a night, slung up in hammocks, which were a lot of fun to use. The evening we were there we spent creeping across rocks to the usual haunt of the blue ducks that live there, a little too far for any spectacular photography, but a good indication that their numbers are rising – we saw seven!
They’re wonderful to watch, hunting in fast flowing water across stony riverbeds and bobbing up every now and then to shake out their wings on a rock.
Dad let me use the D800 with the 500mm lens, so I got some nice shots while he went fly-fishing lower down the river. When the light got too low we called it a night and got into camping mode – with packet curry for dinner and wild blackberries. We stayed up and watched the stars appear by the million and took a photo every two minutes looking straight up through the hole above our clearing. Putting them together will be interesting, although we should have probably taken one every minute.
In the morning, our Blue Duck luck ran out – while Dad saw two feeding before the sun came up, by the time it had there were children fishing in the river right where the ducks had been the night before, and no sign of any ducks. After being surrounded by Whiteheads and Warblers in our clearing, we ventured further down the river.
We saw ducks, but no Blues. It was a beautiful morning regardless, and promised a hot day ahead. While we would have been quite content to stay for another night, we hadn’t planned to, and so we packed up and traveled home after a few bacon and egg manwiches. The Tongariro National Park was a bit of a distraction on the way home – Dad saw a field that had some unusual and photogenic cabbage trees, so we stopped to photograph it, and then an abandoned fixer-upper-boat by Lake Otamangakau. With a still smoking Tongariro in the background, it was a beautiful drive home.
While it was frustrating not to have the luck that Dad had previously had, it was a great experience for me to finally see Blue Ducks and be able to photograph them. And it just means we now have an excuse to go back for more than one night!
And now for a road sign from Middle Earth.
