Variable Oystercatchers/torea-pango

Saturday is dump day on the peninsula, or as they call it today 'transfer station.' Whichever way you look at it, it's me in the truck schlepping our detritus to Terry and his big truck at Poranui.

On the way back from this most mundane of chores (excepting the ever entertaining Terry, who tells me numbers at the Kaituna Bird Sanctuary are up - which is nice, but not nice if you know what I mean) I decided to swing past Birdlings Flat and to see what I could spy, not on the sea, but rather on the shores of Lake Forsyth that washes up against the strip of gravel that doubles for a beach at this windswept seaside settlement.

There were plenty of swans (no change there!), a handful of pied stilts, a good few pairs of white-faced herons (known colloquially as grey herons) with their young, as well as a flock of Red-billed gulls with their juvenille offspring, all of them making plenty of noise.

The latter two varieties were to be found surrounding several of the eel gravel traps used by local fisherman, one of which contained two medium sized eels, writhing in the summer sun awaiting their imminent demise, either by avians or anglers.

On the other side of the trap, I spotted this family of variable oystercatchers. These NZ natives are a fairly common site around the peninsula beaches. Full of industry and purpose, they're quite territorial and don't care for much disturbance, so I was quite chuffed to be able to grab this shot.

The thing I liked about this shot was that it almost looks like a multiple exposure of one bird walking across the frame. Makes you wonder how on earth they'd pick each other out of a crowd...