the weekend

Had a three day weekend, drove up to stay with Troys sister Sue and her hubby Mike at their place in the Rotoiti Forest. Mike is a gamekeeper on a private pheasant shooting estate, a beautiful property with great birdlife (not just Pheasants.) We were joined by Troys brother Rob and his son Bradley, cousin Jess, Matt and our baby godson Charlie. Soooo Cute!

The estate had liberated a flock of partridges a few months ago, originally intended as fodder for the guns but the birds turned out to be overly friendly and made themselves at home. Lucky for them! What a lovely looking bird they are, smaller than a pheasant but bigger than a quail. Saturday morning there was a light rain but I still got some photos of the partridges when they came waddling up for a visit. One landed on the roof of Robs ute and posed for a photo.

Later we all came back to our house and had a few drinks to celebrate my birth day. Think I had one pina colada too many!!! Visitors left Sunday morning so I spent the day trying to attract some more interesting birdlife to our yard. I'd bought a big bag of "wild bird seed" last week from bin inn so I've set up a few little feed stations on the fence. Some sliced kiwifruit kebabs poked into the palings attracted some waxeyes but the afternoon passed without any birds discovering the seed. I have set up an interesting perch closeby of wiggly willow branches so hopefully I will get some nice photos of the visiting birds. I noticed lots of sparrows flying past trailing straw...that time of year again. I did get this shot of a fantail catching tiny flying insects over the roof of our house in the afternoon sun. So hard to focus on them as they flit around. The canon doesnt have a real slow focus time but not super-fast either.