A day of pleasures

Three good things this morning: a farmers’s market at Toombs showground, the purchase and preparation of fresh green-lipped mussels for eating later, and a drive to Haumoana on the coast to look for Spotless Crake.

The weekly market seemed to be a major community event with numerous stalls selling grapes, figs, honey, flowers, all sorts of meat, bakery products and fruit and vegetables. There was live music too, all around a large green space with impressive, but non-native trees, including a magnificent Plane Tree.

Figs of five varieties, honey on the comb and macarons were bought for later consumption.

Then to a small fresh fish shop for mussels, and the fish on ice looking impressive.

This was followed by a short drive to a river mouth with three species of cormorant, Caspian Tern, many stilts and other wetland birds. Best of all though, a Spotless Crake (widespread but elusive) was tempted out of a sedgy area to run back and forth a few times across an inlet of mud. Red eyes and legs and blue-black plumage.

A brief afternoon trip to Tamara Peak in nearby limestone country with a fantastic view and one or two New Zealand Pipits running about on the rocks and grass. An endemic species.Read more