After our visit to Hardwicke, the windy weather forced a change in plan and landing on Enderby felt like a reprieve from the regrets of yesterday. I would have a chance to spend a bit of time focussing on the Auckland Island Teal and the Sea Lion colony that had got lost in the blur of opportunities and fading light of the previous day. As before we were greeted by the Auckland Island Teal in the kelp. They are monogamous and very territorial so we were not surprised to see them there again. They were both resting but, determined not to miss another opportunity, I rigged up my long lens in the company of Edin and Mike Potts, and before long the male began to move about and feed. They show no fear of humans and he happily wandered around us feeding before swimming back across the gully to preen and rest.

They are beautiful little ducks that have lost the need to fly to escape predation so have small wings. The male has a lovely green iridescence to his head, a chestnut breast and delicately barred flanks. They are similar to the larger, flighted mainland Brown Teal and the smaller, darker Campbell Island Teal which is also flightless with it’s own brilliant conservation story. The Auckland Island Teal is endemic to the Auckland Islands , occurring on all the islands apart from the main Auckland Island were the pigs and cats have prevented their re-establishment. They are thought to be the most secure of the three brown plumaged teals.

Whenever I have some new images of a species I check to see if they may be useful to contribute to illustrate NZBirdsOnline which is a fabulous resource on our native birds. I submitted 3 images and was excited to have one chosen as the featured image for the species. Having had one of my photos chosen as the featured image for Auckland Island Shag a few weeks ago it was nice to be able to contribute to improving the photo archive for these endemics as well. See www.newzealandbirdsonline.org.nz for more information on this species.

I could have spent the whole day (or days in fact) in this one spot but the Sea Lions were calling me from along the bay.

photos with Nikon D810 and Nikon 200-400mm f4 lens apart from photo of Edin which was with Fuji X100s