Shorebirds, waders if you like, are found around our coast. In summer our endemic shorebirds like wrybills and New Zealand dotterels are joined by migrants coming from about as far away as a bird possibly can. This month I have added two new species to my photo gallery. Eastern curlews are regular summer visitors to New Zealand, but they are typically very wary, so difficult to photograph well. One curlew recently did things a little differently, staying through winter at Kaiaua on the Firth of Thames, and at times being relatively approachable. With over 800 mm of lens I was able to get some beautiful photos.
An even bigger highlight was the sighting of a semipalmated plover at Miranda, also on the Firth of Thames. This may well be the same bird that was seen near Auckland periodically for almost a year, but which I ‘dipped’ repeatedly on, and this will be only the third or fourth record of this species in New Zealand (depending on whether the Auckland and Miranda birds are the same, as seems likely). With quick trip and three hours crawling on sharp shells I managed to get some worthwhile photos. You can see some in my new album of semipalmated plover photos.
While photographing the semipalmated plover I also made some images of the wrybills with which it was associated, and a beautiful sharp-tailed sandpiper.