Rock Wrens

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So as anyone reading my few blogs will know they are very inconsistent, partly due to lack of internet while I'm traveling but mostly me being too lazy to write them once I get home...

After the hard word from my wife saying it would not be in my best interests to go over seas this year I had to turn my sights to bird watching in my home country of New Zealand. So I took this chance to take a shot at some of our more obscure natives, the main two being the NZ Rock Wren and the Okarito Brown Kiwi, the latter turned out to be a complete failure due to very heavy rain so ill focus this brief blog on the Rock Wrens.

The New Zealand Rock Wren is an endangered Passerine which is only found in alpine and sub-alpine areas in New Zealand's South Island. There is a small population living in the Otaira Valley located in Arthurs Pass national park. I have been up this valley several times to look for the Wrens but have always come up empty handed, I was very much hoping this time would be different...

We had a group of four of us going up the valley, its a pretty easy walk to the foot bridge and from there you just follow the sign posts to the top. Once we reached the top there was nothing else to do but scan the environment with our binoculars for some signs of life, at this point you are well above the tree line so there's not a lot around.

After a while of sitting around and bad weather rolling in the "non birders" of the group started getting restless and the decision was made to head back down. So I gave one last pointless scan up the valley and jumped off my perch, though not two minuets down the trail we all stopped at the same time, there was a high pitch calling coming from a head of us, I headed towards the sound and saw movement amongst the rocks/shrubs, I had a quick scan with the binoculars and managed to catch something small and green darting through the rocks. I was dead sure at this point it had to be a rock wren and as i drew closer my predictions were right! A little female wren jumped out in font of me, followed not long after the male. We spent a good amount of time getting photos as the wrens hopped around us curiously, they truly are friendly little birds!

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Comments

[Israel]

those are great photos!