Headed up to Rotorua with Adel as she was working up there, and I spent the day on the shores of Lake Rotorua taking photos of anything that came into range. I spent almost the whole day at Sulphur Bay boat ramp wandering around with the 400 DO on a monopod. Unfortunately not great weather, with cloudy overcast conditions most of the day, although the sun peeped out a little in the afternoon. There were thousands of scaup rafting along the shore and at least about 10 dabchick. These guys were scooting around the place, with at least one near fully developed juvenile, and breeding must still be going on with territorial disputes between birds. Nice to see and try and photograph, but often a little distant. Did manage some nice shots of the scaup though and then in the afternoon got some pretty nice shots of a flock of goldfinch feeding in the grass nearby. I was taking photos of the flock when a relatively feral cat came along. I was just amazed to see this animal in action as it crawled belly to the ground using all available cover to get closer to the flock, at times pouncing behind clumps of grass to close the gap. The cat managed to get within about 2.5 metres without the birds noticing, and although I was curious to see the final 'pounce' I scared the birds off before the cat had it's chance. The cat stayed crouchingmotionless despite the fact its quarry had just vanished and had a decidedly annoyed look on it's face! Poor old moggy!

As the sun peeped out a little more from behind the clouds I decided it was worth getting my feet wet and waded out into the lake a little to a couple of islands which got me a closer and a better angle on roosting shags. There were both little black and little shags present, the latter with all forms from small white throats through to complete white bellies, so I managed to snap a fair few images of the range. The little black shags were looking pretty smart in their pre-breeding colours with lovely white filoplumes on the neck and nice greenish gloss to the head and neck. After standing in freezing cold water for about 1.5 hours I decided to call it quits and headed back to the Motel to warm up!

Spent a total of about 6 hours at the Waitangi wetlands over the two days. This area is formed by the confluence of the Clive and Ngaruroro Rivers, is located between Clive and Napier in Hawkes Bay, and is often one of the best places for wintering black-fronted terns. At this time of the year the adults are beginning to look pretty smart as they come into breeding plumage, before they head south back to the South Island braided riverbeds to breed during summer. This species is really in trouble, with drastic declines in numbers to probably less than 5,000 breeding pairs. Introduced predators, invasive weeds on their nesting grounds, and river gravel and water extraction for irrigation are all problems for this species. I reckon they truely are one of the World's most beautiful tern species, and hopefully we can encourage sustainable river use and protect these birds from introduced nasties.

On the 22nd I arrived and saw several birds heading inland to paddocks to feed - they often feed over fields hawking insects or dipping to take invertebrates from the ground, as well as being at home at sea where they surface plunge for small fish and crustaceans. I headed across to the river mouth to where the birds normally congregate and to my surprise found around 50 terns sheltering from the stiff westerly wind that was blowing. Most of these were adults that were moulting into breeding plumage, with around 6 juv/immature birds amongst them. Getting low to the ground I managed to get within a few metres of the roosting flock and got some great pics with my 400 DO lens. I was pretty happy with the results as the sun was out most of the time giving good shutter speeds and depth of focus, and nice catchlights in the birds' eyes.

On the 23rd I returned in the afternoon and found only about 10 black-fronted terns this time, with the rest presumably out feeding. They weren't as settled as the previous day as they were roosting in association with red-billed and black-billed gulls and every now and then they were spooked and flew off to settle somewhere else. I still managed a few nice shots though.