Those that follow me on Instagram will know that I have recently been down south chasing birds with Edin on another leg of the #birdventurenz. Our main target was Rock Wren as they were one of the final species she needed to photograph for her book and she was working to a publishers deadline of early December. She had been due to join us on our trip earlier in the year when I managed to get some Rock Wren photos but this plan had been derailed by a session of fieldwork so we were now working in a tight timeframe.

 

We had booked 4 days on the Milford Road which I thought should have been a reasonable amount of time but we struck some unseasonable weather in late November so spent a couple of frustrating days getting nowhere with photographing Rock Wren.

 

 

I am am so far behind in processing images with a lot of exciting photos from our September trip from Dunedin to Rotorua as well as from this latest mission to work through. I have also had a great time recently with Fairy Terns and a rare leucistic Fantail up north but these are all going to have to wait for future posts. Hopefully a few days off over Christmas and New Year will give me a chance to work through some files. In the meantime here are a few photos of the unseasonable weather from Fiordland National Park and one to prove that we succeeded in our Rock Wren mission.

 

Photos with Nikon D500 and Nikon 500m f4VR (Rock wren photo with TC14E teleconverter). Wide shots with Fuji X100F.