A very welcome visitor

A busy day. Drove to Auckland to pick up some plumbing supplies for an interim improvement to the second lavatory in the new house. And some new cushions for the sofa beds. And we also took down the restored and renewed chair that had been S' father's chair many years ago. 

Young L and I shifted the remaining boxes of compressed bamboo flooring out into the garage to allow us to put down the large rug in the sitting room, and put the round dining table at the other end of the room from the sofa bed and Ces' chair. The room now has S' touch on it.

The back to Snells Beach by way of C's home. In time to order fish and chips from the very popular Skillet and Fillet. While waiting for that to be picked up, I had a walk at the northern end of Snells beach. The Kuaka (bar-tailed godwits) were already the as the tide was coming in and this is where they spend the nights. My extra photo for today is of one of the Kuaka landing after flying from a recently submerged sand bar.

We were joined on the deck for the fish and chips by M, S's brother's partner, and we were talking afterwards when I caught sight of a large dark bird flying silently into the big Pohutukawa tree. I knew it wasn't a Tui or a Kereru; both are quite noisy flyers. I wondered about a Ruru (New Zealand's owl). Kept looking and eventually got a good enough glimpse to decide it was probably a Kaka. Kept looking and taking photos, and it was definitely a Kaka, the first I have seen so clearly

Once ubiquitous in the New Zealand bush (forests), it is now regarded as threatened with extinction. S has regularly voted for the Kaka to be our bird of the year, in the hope that may lead to increased efforts to try to eradicate the introduced predators to which it is susceptible.

I'm told that the red colouration is much brighter than it appears to me, my partial colour blindness diminishing my ability to see the brightness of red.