I headed off this morning to Marble Hill in the Lewis Pass area to go tramping. The Lake Daniels track starts from here. It is a walk I have always intended to do and never got around to – until now.

A beautiful walk. Virtually all of it through native bush and teeming with native bird life. We saw tom tits, riflemen, robins, fantails, tui, bellbirds – and we even heard kakariki. So many different things to see and photograph but, as is always the case with me, the birds win out. Not really easy to photograph because of the lack of light filtering through the bush, but I always try.

Here is a tomtit – he is a lovely lad who hung around on the track with us for quite a while. The riflemen were really noticeable today too – both the busy little peeps they make and the birds themselves, but they’re so tiny that they’re seriously hard to get a good photo of.

However, for my Mum, here are two photos of them in my blipfolio – ONE and TWO (note that two shows TWO blurry birds not just one).

MUM: I’ll take you in there to see them as soon as you’re well enough to walk for half an hour or so over a rough bush track.

There were a lot of cars in the car park so we were worried about how many trampers there might be in the hut. Walking in we passed quite a number of trampers coming the other way – the hut holds 24 and we didn’t take airbeds with us or a tent so we were seriously hoping that plenty would leave and not too many would arrive. We were really lucky, and when we got there we were the only people. It wasn’t until quite some hours later that another couple arrived – not bad – a 24 bed hut for four of us.