Torea wins!

On Friday, S told me that the forecast was for a sunny day on Saturday, and wet on Sunday. So yesterday's blip of the track across Kawau Bay from the newly risen sun was in the expectation of no Sunday Sunrise this morning.

The rain is yet to arrive. The young woman who does a bit of heavy gardening work for us said when she arrived this morning that the forecast rain is now due tomorrow. Certainly today has been still, and sunny. Cool, especially out of the winter sun.

Having woken early enough to be down on the foreshore and running (there and back again) as the sun rose above the horizon, I was treated to a spectacle in the sky. Any one of a number of photos would have pleased me enough on their own to be my blip for today.

In the end I chose this one as it was just after the sun first showed itself above the Tawharanui Peninsula. I had stopped running to take a photo of a man waiting for his dog to return the stick he had thrown in the water for her. A few steps further and I saw the sun begin to show. So I took this, delaying slightly as I caught sight of the birds about to enter the frame.

I had no time to identify them in the flesh and presumed they were both gulls (probably the red billed, which is most common here). On looking at it large, and then doing a zoom in, I realised that the lower bird, which is ahead and actually going faster, was a Torea (oystercatcher).