Flighty poaka

Because this is the weekend when New Zealand marks the birth of the Queen of England (she is also said to be the Queen of New Zealand) with a day off work (for most people) on Monday, I only made appointments for the morning so that we could get away before the crush of traffic later in the afternoon. 

An easy and comfortable drive north, arriving in time to have lunch. A couple of days ago S made a fish stew, using a recipe she had not tried before. It was lovely, and there was enough left for us to have it for lunch today.

Just as I sat down to enjoy it, there was a vigorous knocking on the front door. Simon and two assistants needed me to shift the car from where I had parked it, so they could carry the stairs through to the cliff side of the house to take us down from the deck outside the lower level of the house to the newer deck down in the gully leading to the cliff edge. 

By the time I had finished my lunch (just as tasty as the first time round) they had installed the steps and gone. Makes a great difference. There were steps there before, but they needed replacement because so much of the wood was rotten.

As we were indulging in the pleasure of the newly restored access to the lowest deck, Victoria (our gardener, and the one who organises these changes we are making) arrived to talk about the plantings. Once I could dig holes to plant trees and smaller plants without too much difficulty. It is much harder here because of all the hard clay, and Victoria is much better at digging than I now am. And I'm quite enjoying doing the easier things!!

After that conversation I went down to the edge of the bay, where the water was less than two hours away from high tide. On the edges of the water, some waders were still present. And of course the omnipresent ducks and gulls. Variable oystercatchers (toreapango) on the rocks, a few masked lapwings, and more poaka (Pied stilts) than I have seen there before.

Because I had chosen to walk I had the long lens (100 - 300 mm) on the camera. When I was still what I though was some distance away from them they took flight. I think that they may have been a bit agitated by the even flightier lapwings which had gone some time before with much squawking. 

I like the pattern the birds have made here.

The rain returned later this afternoon, and we are about to settle down for a hot bowl of soup. The weekend beckons.