Blog

I am constantly drawn to the beauty of Taranaki. This mountain dominates the Taranaki landscape and has always been a major presence in my life. Not only did I grow up in its shadow but have also had the great privilege to have spent much of my life exploring its slopes. My father was a keen climber and took my brother and I on many climbs and tramps on all sides of the mountain from a young age. In many ways, this mountain, Taranaki, is my spiritual home. It is the place I go to feel close to m …

Sandy Bay is a small coastal reserve on the west Taranaki coast. It is an area of coastal dunes which has been protected and slowly restored by the Ngati Tara o Oanui Sandy Bay Conservation Society.  It is one of the few places on the Taranaki coastline where New Zealand Dotterel succesfully nest. There is a good variety of shore birds here and one of my favourite places to go for a bit of bird watching and photography.I headed off at dawn on Saturday morning and spent an absorbing couple o …

One of my favourite spots to watch and photograph kotare (The NZ sacred kingfisher) is the rock pools at west end beach in New Plymouth.  Over winter this is one of the favourite hunting spots for kotare and low tide there will normally be about 10 of them hunting amongst the rock pools.After several weekend of bad weather I finally got down there at dawn yesterday and spent a couple of hours watching and photographing this most stunning of our New Zealand native birds.Catch Of The DayGoing …

It's been a while since I've gone down to the Waiwhakaio river mouth to do some bird photography but it was aclear morning yesterday so I headed out with my camera. The Waiwhakaio river mouth is one of the best spots for seeing birds in New Plymouth with a wide variety of shore birds as well as lots of finches, yellow hammer, silvereye, skylark and thrushes in the coastal scrub area.  I often see something unexpected. Yesterday it was a pair of Caspian tern which we don't see that ofte …

We were down in Wellington for the weekend visiting our daughter. I woke early on Sunday morning and seeing it was a clear morning headed out to get some dawn photos looking over the city from the Khandallah hills. These shots were taken from Armritsar St starting from approx an hour before sunrise.Wellington city and harbourThe first Picton Ferry sailing of the day heading out across the harbour.Early morning cloud lit up above the Petone foreshore lights.Wellington city lights Sunlit cloud acr …