After my recent posts featuring Kingfishers from Tawharanui and Whangateau, I thought I would share a more local venue that I like to visit for Kingfishers in the winter. Little Waihi is a relatively short trip from home and is an ideal spot to watch winter Kingfishers hunting for crabs and juvenile flounder as the tide recedes over the mudflats. I have previously shared some images from this venue in my post on Sacred Kingfishers.

There are a few rocks that the birds use as hunting perches but I added a stick perch into the mud before setting up my chair hide. My hope was that the birds would use the higher vantage point to gain a wider view over the flats and give me a chance to photograph them against a cleaner more distant background. 

On this occasion my plan didn’t work. The Kingfishers seemed creatures of habit well accustomed to their rock perches and completely ignored my branch carefully set to achieve a nice background. I managed a number of shots of birds retrieving crabs and flounder, dismembering crabs and swallowing prey but nothing really exciting due to the busy background of mudflat.

On departing we found a dead pine tree standing at the edge of the water, which despite being completely unphotogenic, was hosting 3 kingfishers. Using my vehicle as a hide we approached slowly and I managed to get a sequence of a Kingfisher flying back to perch with a captured crab. It then dismembered and swallowed the crab but it was only the photos without the messy perch that were worthwhile.

Photos with Nikon D850, Nikon 500mm f4VR lens with TC14 1.4x teleconverter