The Hen and Chickens and beyond

Sav and I continued north first thing, visiting the sandy/stony shore at Waipo. The tide was exceptionally high as the moon was at full and waders were roosting in good view. Banded and New New Zealand Dotterels, tame birds, gave wonderful views and amongst them were three Fairy Terns. Rare and unexpected, and somewhat like our Little Terns.

Then on to Marsden Bay to meet up with a Wrybill Birding tour for a pelagic trip, particularly to search for the New Zealand Storm-petrel, fairly recently rediscovered by Wrybill after being thought extinct for more than 150 years.

Two hours in a fast fishing vessel took us through large congregations of Fluttering and Buller’s Shearwaters to our furthest point, Mokohinau Island, the rocky home of a few roosting Grey Ternlets - a kind of Noddy.

This was followed by three stops on the return trip for ‘chumming’ with minced salmon to bring in petrels. It turned out that what we saw was an unusually poor list of birds, lacking even the most likely - White-faced Storm-petrel. However, three New Zealand Storm-petrels appeared and the wonderful Cook’s Petrel passed a dozen times.

A fantastic trip with added common and bottlenose dolphins and some excitingly rough seas.Read more