Plenty of shags in NZ!

This morning we found Pollard Park in Blenheim - a large green park, with some lovely Japanese and rose gardens and another great kids play park. We also found some large conkers and hundreds of very large acorns (many over an inch long) there - clearly some British tree species have been introduced here, as well as birds. Later this morning we headed up to Picton to do a boat trip in the Marlborough Sounds. The scenery was good but the wildlife was even better. We got to see many seabirds, including 3 different species of shag (similar to cormorants - sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping for a racier blog post!) including the spotted shag (2nd photo) and rare king shag (3rd photo - this bird only lives in the Marlborough Sounds, nowhere else in the world); we also saw shearwaters, skua and red-billed gulls (the latter of which tried to steal our picnic lunch!). We saw some seals along the way - young males resting on the rocks, so we were able to get quite close for good views of them. We also got to see a pod of about 50 bottlenose dolphins, swimming all around the boat; some of them came up very close to our boat and they were fantastic to see, even Solana didn't mind being woken up from her nap to see those guys! We stopped at Motuara Island, a small uninhabited island where predators have been eradicated to help restore some of NZ's endemic bird populations, so we saw some unusual land birds there including NZ robin, fantail, saddleback and bellbird. Still no whales spotted but it was a great day and we're crossing our fingers for whales the day we get the ferry across to the North Island....Read more