After our visit to Hahei photographing NZ Dotterels, Gannets and Cathedral Cove we crossed to the western side of the Coromandel Peninsula for a couple of days at Te Puru just north of Thames. The shallow Firth of Thames is a rich environment with the legendary Pūkorokoro/Miranda Shorebird Centre on its western shore. There are usually clouds of Tara/Terns at Pūkorokoro/Miranda and the eastern side of the Firth has a good population too. I have often photographed them at Te Puru and on this Spring visit there was a good collection of courting birds near the boat ramp. This gave excellent opportunities for flight shots with many birds carrying anchovies as offerings to potential partners.

When there is so much activity it can be hard to focus on one specimen to get a good image. I found it best to try and lock onto an individual flying in with a fish and then track him in the hope of catching some interesting behaviour.

With busy environments like this is is difficult to get backgrounds without too many distractions.

The net result is similar to when doing slow shutter pan/blurs. Lost of images that need culling. The frustrating part is that there are often some interesting images that are just not useable because of distractions that destroy the composition.

My hope, with all this activity, was to get some images documenting courtship feeding and mating. While not completely successful, I will share some more images next week.

Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikon 500mm f5.6PF lens. Overview photo by Angela with iPhone 5SE.