Another stunning blue sky day on the West
Coast…how long could this last? We were
up a little later based on our nocturnal excursion the previous night, and
headed south towards Fox Glacier.
Passing through some stunning scenery and superb forest we were again on
the look out for falcon, so headed to a local spot near a lake to take a
look. With coffee in hand, this time the
falcons neglected to show, they had obviously not received the memo! However, stunning views of the mountains and
surrounds were an excellent consolation, and epic views of Mt Tasman and Mt
Cook topped it all off.
We grabbed some lunch, stowed it in the
cooler in the back to stop random nibbling before lunch time (!) and then
headed on south. Not too far south of
Fox Glacier a large bird circling way up high came in to view, but that was not
the thing of interest, what was was the smaller shape circling near it!
“Falcon” was the yell from the drivers seat, and finding the next available
pull in spot we ground to a halt, to scan an empty sky. Somehow the falcon and the great cormorant
had both managed to dispear in the short time it had taken to come to a
stop. But then again the yell went up,
this time from Geoff, and we all got onto a rather ragged looking female falcon
flying across the road in front of us, giving good prolonged flight views as
she headed away into the forest on the far valley wall! Phew, the monkey was off our back!
We were pretty happy as we continued our
way south, and as we neared the coast, winding our way back and forth through
some of the switchbacks on the road, again the yell of “Falcon” went up from
the drivers seat. This time a bird
perched up on a high snag above the road, and as we pulled into a nice wide
pull in area a short way down the road the bird stayed right where it was. With the scope on it, it was not hard to
identify the bird as a recently fledged juvenile, probably a female based on
her size. As we all got great views of
her through the scope, she suddenly started calling, leaving her perch and
flying out over us as we realised there was nother bird approaching from
further up the valley. Hardly able to
believ our eyes, right in front of us we watched the adult male fly in and pass
food to this clearly female juvenile! A
mid-air food pass! Wow! The male headed off out of sight and the
young female went up to a visible perch and started to eat whatever poor small
bird had become breakfast! All in the
scope, but it didn’t last long and she was getting anxious, having inhaled her
snack. A short time later there was more
calling and the young female calling, also left her perch and flew out again,
with the adult male coming in and doing a second food pass! It doesn’t get much better than this, and with
800mm and 600mm lenses pointing to the sky there were no doubt a few action
shots snapped! We watched the young bird
consume most of her second meal, waiting a bit longer for any more action, but
then deciding we needed to get back on the road.
We continued southwards, stopping in to try
some local whitebait fritters – you just can’t drive the West Coast of New
Zealand without having a whitebait fritter!
Of course, one fritter led to two fritters…a little snack before lunch! We then continued south to try our luck at
spotting a Fiordland penguin or two, but hadn’t reached our location when
another falcon flew across the road in front of us. Coming to a grinding halt we spun around and
jumping out Geoff said “There it is”, hang on, he was looking at a different
bird, so in the end we had another two falcon, again a juvenile and an
adult. We watched the juvenile fly
around the place, harassing the adult, obviously wanting to be fed, and after
some time had great views of them both on the same perch, with the adult
flapping whilst the juvenile screamed “Feed me! Feed me!”. Fantastic – a FIVE falcon day! They both flew off across the road and
disappeared, and so it was time to carry on.
We got to a piece of coast where we scanned for penguins, but alas
nothing. However, we did have a very close
pod of about 10+ bottle-nosed dolphins cruising along, leaping and cavorting…love
seemed to be in the air!
We had our lunch watching the dolphins and
scanning for penguins, all the while bathed in sunshine (and swatting
sandflies), and then were on our way again, heading inland and up and over the
mountains towards Wanaka. We made a
couple of stops, checking out a forested area for bush birds. There were a lot of rifleman around and nice
opportunities to see them, a few tomtit, but otherwise the forest was
relatively quiet. We could distantly
hear yellowhead, but they were just so far off and not showing any sign of
coming any closer, so we decided to head for the accomodation in Wanaka. As we left the forest wet West Coast, and
headed up through to the very contrasting and dry Wanaka area, we decided what
better way of having dinner than with a BBQ at the accomodation! Even better with a couple of bottles of great
New Zealand wine!
Day
total – Seen = 37 + 2 heard (kaka, yellowhead); new
for the trip = 0; total for the trip to date = 146
Mt Tasman (left) and Mt Cook |
Checking out the falcons |
The adult, sick of the noisy youngster takes off |
Bottle-nosed dolphins heading past the shore |
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