Pied Shag at Picton

This morning we took the ferry from Wellington to Picton as the rest of our holiday in New Zealand is to be spent on the South Island. As we left the ferry port we spotted 3 of these rather splendid birds; they were engrossed in preening themselves so I had to wait quite a while before this one was prepared to pose momentarily for the camera! From our reference book, we think it's a pied shag, but please tell me if you think we're wrong.

We're now in Kaikoura, hoping for good weather tomorrow as we're booked on a whale-watching boat trip.

The drive from Picton to Kaikoura was interesting: the road was severely damaged by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in November 2016, and only re-opened about Chrismas 2017. It's amazing to see how much repair work they've done in a little over a year, but there's still a lot more being done. Some stretches of the road are open only to single file traffic, and they still close it each night.