Our North Island road trip continued down the Wairarapa from Masterton through Carterton, Greytown and Featherston, up over the Rimutaka hill and down to Petone where we spent the night before turning back up north. The trip up the Kapiti Coast necessitated a stop at the Swazi factory shop in Levin and then a long anticipated stop at the Manawatu Estuary at Foxton Beach. It is only a short 5km detour from State Highway 1 at Foxton. This RAMSAR site is the largest estuary on the western side of the lower North Island and a regular site for visiting waders including Bar-tailed Godwits. The weather was not ideal but having read regular interesting birding reports from the area we had to stop for a while. I explored along a section and was glad to find a few residual Godwits and some Royal Spoonbills in addition to the more common resident birds.

Travelling light on this trip, I had left the 500mm f4 behind in favour of the 300mm f4 PF with the 1.4x teleconverter giving me the equivalent of a 630mm f5.6 on the D500 and this worked well for the opportunities available. If this had been a dedicated bird photography trip the 500mm f4 would have been better but I could not justify the pain of carrying it for the limited opportunities planned.