Tui are are attractive birds with a distinctive white tuft under their throat. Belonging to the honeyeater family, their diet mainly consists of nectar from flowers, but they also eat fruit, berries and insects.
A tui with a red berry in its beak
Tui are teritorial and quite aggressive, this one has been spending alot of time outside my window protecting its plentiful food supply and chasing other birds away who dare to come near.
A little Silvereye flying away with a stolen berry.
Tui are native and unique to New Zealand, you can often hear them singing their beautiful melodies before you see them.
Recently, we visited the Cape Kidnappers gannet colony which is about a half hour drive from Napier or Hastings (New Zealand).
Gannets flying above the plateau colony.
Sitting 100 metres above the Pacific Ocean is the worlds largest, most accesible mainland colony, where you can get very close to the nesting birds and watch them performing ‘the dance of the gannets’ ritual.
A gannet pair performing the dance of the gannets.
To get there you can either walk about 8 kilometres along the beach at low tide, then climb up (100 metres) to see them, or you can go with one of the tour operators.
A gannet pair performing the dance of the gannets.
We chose to go with Gannet Safaris who took us in a 4×4 Coach, over private land to the plateau colony (very close to the nesting birds). It was a wonderful experience and I can highly recommend it! The tour lasted approximately 3 hours.
Taking photos at the Cape Kidnappers Plateau gannet colony.
There were a lot of gannets coming and going, plenty of noise from calling to each other… and then there was the smell!
MY TIPS:
1. If you want to get down low to take photos (like I did) but don’t want to get dirty, then I suggest you take something to sit on or take a change of clothes. Your photos will be more intimate and have a cleaner background if taken at eye level to your subjects.
2. Try and get the sun/light behind you when you are taking photos so that you get good light on your subject, rather than a dark shadow on its face. We booked the afternoon tour because I knew the sun would be behind me.
2. Birds will usually approach facing the wind to protect their feathers from damage. If the wind is coming straight off the water, you may get some great flight photos if you turn around as some birds were circling around behind me and flying straight overhead as they came in to land.
3. Use a fast shutter speed for birds in flight (try 1/1500 – 1/2000 sec).
4. The best time to see them is between November and February, before they migrate offshore to warmer climates.
Please leave comments or ask questions, I will do my best to answer them.
Tui are popular songbirds, known for their noisy, unusual call. Two voiceboxes allow them to produce a varied song combining clicks, cackles, timber-like creaks, groans, and wheezing sounds.
There’s no place like home, and it’s good to be back in New Zealand again after a five month road-trip in North America with my husband Steve. Our RV journey took us to amazing places, where we had many special wildlife encounters; memories that will stay with us for a very long time. We loved watching the Black bear cubs playing while Mumma bear was busy feeding on the lush spring growth.
By the middle of June, Yellowstone was a very busy place, with thousands of people driving the roads in search of bears, bison, elk, wolves, kyotes, foxes and more, some proving to be very elusive. ‘Wildlife jams’ were common, whenever animals were sighted the traffic would stop and build up while sight seers got their photos, and the animals had crossed over safely.
After a few weeks in Yellowstone National Park we headed north towards Glacier National Park, then followed the Rocky mountains into Canada and up to Jasper.
