Our trip to the Waitakeres for the Going West Writers Festival didn’t have bird photography high on the agenda. Opportunities present themselves everywhere so the bird photography gear had to go along just in case. We had booked a rural cottage close to the the Arataki Vistors Centre and while unpacking our vehicle I saw a Kingfisher/Kotare sitting up on a branch of a tortured old pine. Sitting on the porch with a coffee I saw that it was one of two using the tree as a hunting perch to locate worms on the lawn below. They would intermittently swoop down to collect a piece of animated spaghetti and return to a branch to thrash it into submission. A bit of a wander got me a few images of which this is my favourite. I managed to use the trunk of the tree as cover to conceal myself and got a view of the kingfisher just above the crook of a branch which gave a nice out of focus foreground to isolate the bird.

The following day we headed to Piha after the festival and explored some of the iconic west coast landscapes. Walking back from the store after an ice-cream I noticed a Tui low in the branches of a flowering Coral Tree (also known as a Flame Tree). This was all we needed to spend half an hour or more trying to isolate him against a relatively clean background amongst all the pale branches. Despite it being a non-native tree it was nice to contrast the blue/green iridescence of the plumage with the bright red flowers.

Interestingly the Coral tree is a sterile hybrid created from a North American and African species so produces no fertile seed. This along with frost-tenderenss limits its invasiveness but cuttings/fallen branches root readily and form dense stands. This has implications for control as cutting down live trees can exacerbate the problem. Thorough ring barking or cutting or drilling with herbicide application is effective. See this link from Auckland Council for more information.

Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikon 500mm f5.6PF lens, Kingfisher with TC14EII 1.4x teleconverter.