Bit of a twitch

Now, if I were properly professional, or even could just be bothered, this is the sort of photo I might have got this morning, on my 4 hour birding expedition with Steve Attwood. But I can’t handle, literally, hauling that gear around, so this is Steve’s photo of some bar-tailed godwits, taken on his Canon with a lens so big that it stopped three separate passers-by in astonishment. My photos are much less impressive, see:

No contest.  But I did enjoy my outing this morning around the Ashley Rakahuri estuary, even if it did involve four hours of solid walking and two wadings through the river, which is, this being early spring, still rather chilly. But there was so much chat and information going on, it really didn’t matter. Apparently we saw 24 bird species, plus some foreign interlopers like mute swans and Canada geese, spit. Excellent morning. Give Steve a whirl: Auldwood Birds.

Then it was back to Christchurch, to look pretty much in vain for places from my past, mostly eliminated by the earthquakes. But there’s a lot of new stuff to enjoy, plus some still recognisable features. Like the Arts Centre, once the University of Canterbury’s Townsite campus - and where I would have been staying tonight, at the Observatory, if blasted Covid hadn’t got in the way. Shame.