Muriwai Gannets

Continuing on with our Northland travels from before Covid. I thought I'd better finish soon as we're now heading back to the North Island for a few months!  And I'm afraid it's going to be a bit of a gannet photo fest.

Our last stop before heading into Auckland was at the Muriwai Beach Motor Camp. I wanted to check out the gannet colony and also try for some west coast sunset shots.

Muriwai Beach

The gannet chicks were in various stages of development; tiny bald youngsters, big fluffy white chicks & motley coloured juveniles testing the limits of their nest boundaries & flapping to strengthen their wings 

A tender moment with a parent

Time to take 40 winks

Contemplating life in the colony

There's not a spare piece of real estate left on all available rock stacks & plateaus

Juveniles watch on as an adult displays

"You keep off my patch you here?"

Can you see the lookout at the top? there are areas you can watch the gannets from

Muriwai Beach

I managed to capture the sun setting on the first night...

...and also had some great light on the way home.

But the next evening it was very unsettled and then a bank of cloud rolled in. I still found some great subjects to photograph; fisher people & other photographers.

When I got back to camp, David was having happy hour with our neighbours who were visiting from the Netherlands and travelling around the North Island in a motorhome. 

He had a surprise for me, they had offered us two of their tickets for the open day at Gibbs Sculpture Farm which wasn't too far back up the road, you'll remember we passed it on the road to Muriwai. They'd bought four tickets for two different days so they had options if the weather wasn't great. They'd decided to go the next day so we could visit the following day. 

David decided he wouldn't go so they kept that ticket to pass onto someone else. There was no way I wasn't going! I couldn't wait...

Pakawau- The Home of the Shag

Real-time!!!

Yes, finally I am catching up. But it's been a double-edged sword.  It's not because I have been diligently working away at it (even though I have), it's because we have had so much rain that I've been able to fill in many days doing blogs and photos. Which also means we haven't been exploring as much as we usually would so I don't have too many blogs to catch up on.

We've spent the last three weeks at the beautiful beachside settlement of Pakawau in Golden Bay, at the top of the South Island; Pa= home, kawau= shag. Hence the 'home of the shag' in the title. Not that we've seen many shags (cormorants for my overseas readers), the village should be renamed Patōrea; home of the Oystercatchers, there are hundreds of them!

From Kaiteriteri we headed over the infamous Takaka Hill, winding our way all the way up and then zig-zagging all the way down into Golden Bay. It reminded me of the blog I did the last time we visited Golden Bay and the local tourist slogan- 'It's just a hill, get over it'. 

Just past Takaka we drove down a side road to have lunch at the historic Waitapu Wharf (1863) which was once a bustling commercial and passenger terminus for Golden Bay but now a deserted, slightly battered jetty and home to a few yachts and fishing boats. It was one of our least salubrious lunch stops (spot 'Out There' down there?).

The rain started just as we left the wharf and it hasn't really stopped since- well that's not quite right, but it's rained more than it's shined that's for sure. We were headed to the end of the road, on the far side of Golden Bay just below Farewell Spit,  to the Wharariki Holiday Park. We had a slight delay while we waited for a mob of recently shorn sheep to be returned to their paddock.

We spent about 5 weeks in Golden Bay a couple of years ago, staying mostly at Collingwood and Pohara. This time I wanted to stay near Wharariki Beach's Archway Islands so I could attempt to shoot the islands at sunrise and/or sunset.

Unfortunately after travelling down the narrow 8km gravel road in the pouring rain and driving into the camp, we found the few sites we would have fitted in were boggy and waterlogged.  After chatting with the caretaker, we decided it was probably best to head to another camp. With no turning bay I had to guide David out backwards, no mean feat with the rain now torrential and two excitable horses charging about, thundering up and down banks through the camp. They stopped galloping about to watch us as we left- perhaps they thought we were their horse float come to rescue them from the weather!

We headed back up the road; we had a CAP (cost apply parking) in mind, the Old School Cafe at Pakawau. We'd had a look at it on the way past on our last visit and I'd also heard lots of positive reports, including how great the cafe/restaurant food was.

With signs asking that we respect the lawn and keep driving to a minimum, and with the rain still torrential, we pulled carefully onto the grass in the corner...

...and that is where we stayed, fully hitched for the next 3 nights (max. stay allowed) while the heavens dumped bucket load after bucket load on us. These photos were taken on the last day... 

...just before we crossed over the road to the Pakawau Beach Camp, which is where we have been parked up for just over two weeks. We've had the camp to ourselves many nights and on others, there's just been one or two other vans in.

We've had the most amazing time overlooking this beautiful golden sand beach...

...watching the tides come and go and the weather chop and change just as regularly.

I love to park where there's an open view and where I can watch the world go by from the window...

...from locals walking their dogs, a seal pup arriving for a rest...

...gannets, terns and gulls sweeping back and forward along the breakers, diving for small fish in the shallow waters just outside the window...

...to the local trotter being exercised at low tide.

Pakawau Beach Camp is one of the old school, classic kiwi campgrounds; a bit rough around the edges with basic facilities (there is no dump station) but still perfectly adequate and with the most welcoming and friendly owners. We decided we could have left Kaiteriteri earlier and stayed here for some of the winter (they have weekly winter rates until Labour weekend)- we'll know for next time.

I've had a great time photographing the local birds on the beach and in camp. The air has been filled with bird song from dawn until dusk; the resident tuis are feeding (and courting) in the flowering trees and plants that surround the camp.

I've also managed to capture quite a number of sunrises...

...they're a small consolation for the wet weather than invariably sweeps in not long after the brilliant colours bleach out of the sky.

And of course we made good use of the Old School Cafe- well why wouldn't we, it was just across the road. I can report that the cafe has a great atmosphere and the food is indeed excellent- in order of enjoyment (no, not all on the same day); Seafood Chowder (lunch), Whitebait Fritters (dinner), Blue Cod & Chips (take-away) & Asian Pork Belly (dinner- last day, no food left in the cupboard. Well that's what I told David anyway).

Dolphins Come For Dinner

I thought I’d work on another blog post this afternoon while David went fishing, I had no idea I’d end up with a totally different post to the one I had in mind!

An hour or so after he left the boat ramp in the Takacat dinghy I got a phone call from him to say that he was surrounded by dolphins and gannets, leaping and diving all about him and riding his bow wave. I was disappointed I wasn’t with him but he was too far out to come and get me so I told him to take some photos on his phone, and then to get on and catch dinner!

Half an hour later I got another call- “Grab your camera and get to the jetty quick, I’ll pick you up! The dolphins are just around the point and heading into the bay” So I threw on my jacket, grabbed my camera and was at the jetty ready & waiting. I’d like to say I gracefully leaped into the boat but it was a rather undignified entry due to the fact the low tide deck was higher than the water. I’m definitely not as agile as I used to be but to be fair the dinghy is not a very stable platform either. Safety seated after a fair bit of wobbling and exclamations of doom from David we zoom off heading for the horizon.

And around the point I see the first dolphin leaping our of the water heading our way.

There’s an underwater frenzy going on and dolphins are all around us leaping, tail slapping and swimming very fast, they’re on the hunt and take no notice of us, there’ll be no bow riding dolphins for me today.

These are Dusky Dolphins and there’s about 20-30 in the pod. Duskys are smaller than the Bottle Nose dolphins we are more familiar with, their head is more streamlined without the beak (at the end of the snout) of the Bottle Nose. The Dusky Dolphin is very social and their pods can number more than 1,000 however it is more common to find them in much smaller numbers, typically 20 to 500 dolphins.

It’s very hard to capture dolphins while they are hunting as they don’t follow a straight line through the water, they twist and turn at great speed as they chase the fish and you’re not sure where they’ll come up for air. When they are cruising I can usually anticipate where they’ll exit the water and often it’ll be a leap which is much easier to catch. These shots are all hit and miss affairs and for every one here there are at least 20 in the bin! Thank God for the quick-burst setting, my camera sounded like a machine gun as I hit the shutter.

We followed along the edge of all the activity as the dolphins chased the fish further into our bay. Above the dolphins the gannets swooped and dive-bombed, exploding back out of the water with fish in their bills. And then with a laboured take off they’d circle back up high again and repeat the dive over and over again.

The Australasian Gannet – Maori name; Takapu, has 1.8 metre wing span and is common around New Zealand coastal waters.

Some sat on the water peering into the depths looking to see which way the fish went.

Once the action moved on, the sitting gannets were quick to take off after the melee.

What a pity the 3 sleeper-vans with overseas tourists that stayed for the last two nights in the DOC camp left this morning, they’d have had a good view of the dolphins. Some swam right up near the jetty where the water is crystal clear.

The hunting parties moved out of the centre of the bay and into the deep clear green waters of a cove on the side. We could clearly see the speed of the dolphins under water here and the rippling line of broken water where fish virtually walked on water to get away from them.

A few dolphins came over to say hello, swimming under and around us. The water in the bay is saturated with jelly fish, you can see a couple at the bottom of this next photo. I got some awesome shots of them yesterday when we were also out on the boat. I’ll post them in another blog (if I ever get time to do them!)

As the hunting and chasing carried on up the edge of the bay, back out towards open water, it was time for us to head for home after another awesome experience with nature. This is why we’re doing what we’re doing. Every day brings new experiences.

Oh, and by the way David didn’t catch dinner either……well he did but he felt sorry for them, so two lucky kahawai got to live another day! Sausages anyone?