9 April 2011

Wild New Zealand

Here are our best shots of the wildlife in New Zealand. They were often very accommodating in letting us get quite close. Equally, they were quite hard to find – New Zealand has its own conservation problems and they’re desperately trying to reverse all the damage done in under 200 years of European habitation.

$These Hector\'s Dolphins were beautiful, their graceful movements carried out in silence in the mirror flat waters of the QCS except for the \'pfff-hu\' of their breathing$

$Far less rare than the Hector\'s, we also saw Dusky dolphins like this one and Bottlenose too$

$New Zealand Sealions, it\'s a little known fact that cheesy 1980\'s love duets are a big part of their courtship$

$He\'s blue all over except for a huge red roman beak and giant feet, he\'s the Pukeko$

$The Kea is the world\'s only alpine parrot. Which is brilliant on its own, since there\'s nothing more tropical than a parrot.$

$I\'ve got this Saddleback in here because he\'s rare. So rare that he only exists on a few off-shore islands where predators have been eradicated$

$Second pluckiest being the daft Weka. This one ran off into the bushes at our approach, but I stopped and said \'come out, we have snacks\'... and he emerged cautiously to see$