Look at me! Look at me!!

This is a rather confused image, because the bird showing off in the front is not actually the bird that's most interesting!

The most interesting bird is the little dark one hiding its head under its wing - I was there for ages and it didn't bring its head out once! The reason it is very interesting is if you look at it closely under the right wing you can see an aerial hanging down so it's obviously being radio tracked. It is also banded.

I looked at it yesterday and didn't realize it was special till much later looking closely at some other images I took. It's a brown teal - the other paler ducks are grey teal and are plentiful, the shoveller showing off in the front is also plentiful, but the little dark duck - the brown teal - there are < 1000 of them and all in very difficult to get to places - Great Barrier Island, Northland. It has been badly affected by wetland draining and because it is ground dwelling, predation by introduced animals.

There are breeding programmes at Orana Park and Willowbank and I suspect this duck is a release from one of these places and is being monitored.

It is endemic to NZ and highly endangered.

Anyway, not an exciting photo photographically, but very exciting to a bird enthusiast!!