The land of bird poo and feathers...

We went to Nga Manu on Sunday.  Technically for my birthday, also because Nev actually had the day afternoon off (he ended up working overnight/morning beforehand), but mostly because I thought Alex would have fun at the duck/pukeko/swan feeding areas.    It also provided the chance to play with my new zoooooomy lens.  

Alex did indeed have fun feeding the birds.  Though once she'd run out of pellets she started throwing gravel to them instead.  She must've been won over by all those hopeful little faces looking up at her.  She also insisted on doing a fair amount of walking, but you had to keep a very close eye on her so she didn't sit down in a pile of duck poo.  

Typically, the more interesting birds (Kea and Kaka) weren't posing nicely for the camera, but I still managed to take a few decent photos.  There's a whole set on Flickr and a few below.  You can click on them to make them bigger, or not, if you're lazy and really don't care that much.  Whatever.  

Rocking her new sunnies

Getting swarmed

Paradise Duck

Heron

Young Pukeko.  You can actually see its face on the bigger version of this photo.

Swan - liked to pluck ducks when being fed.  Dick.

Work That Camera!

Alex was in a pretty good mood after her nap, so I thought I'd take some pictures.  Things started off promisingly...

But when I plonked her down away from the messy background, well, this happened...

Hey, what's this? 

Grrr.  Cute hairdo be gone!

And that was the end of that.

Weather permitting, we're off to Nga Manu in a couple of weeks.  Alex will get to see all the ducks and duckens*, and I'll finally get to play with my shiny new zooooooomy lens.  w00t!



* Birds have been categorised into either ducks or duckens.  Ducks are birds that will eat her sandwich if she throws it away - ducks, seagulls, pigeons.  Duckens are any other bird.