Pied Shags

                Takeoff and Landing, a pied shag in breeding colours.

Gull versus Heron

  In this sequence of photos I captured a gull getting territorial over a rock near the Whakatane Rivermouth. A white-faced Heron had landed on the rock and the gull took exception to it and started a swooping attack on the Heron. There was only so much the heron was going to take though and after what was essentially only a few seconds the heron started to fight back. In the final image I'm not sure if the heron was chasing the gull or just leaving the premises.

Kingfishers and crabs

The past week I have become enchanted with Kingfishers. They've always been an elusive subject but with my new camera and 150-600mm lens I finally feel like I can do them justice. A breeding pair of them feed at low tide in an area near the childrens playground at the Whakatane Heads, the male brightly coloured and bolder in attitude too. Their main food source right now is crabs which they are catching in abundance. They catch the crab in their substantially sized beak and the first mission is to break enough of its legs to enable it to be swallowed. This they do by bashing the crab violently against a rock. I have photographed this action and noticed that while they are doing this the nictitating membrane  covers the eye to protect it. This is a translucent membrane that acts as a third eyelid to protect the birds eye, in this case protection from flying crabs legs! It accounts for the strange look in the kingfishers eye in photo number 4 and gives the appearance that the bird is blind. I can assure you this is not the case and they have excellent eyesight!

I made a GIF!

Cemetery Cicadas

Yesterday I met Mum at a special place I know where the cicadas are super abundant. The spot is a cemetery with a large grove of some lovely tall trees and the noise of cicada song is deafening. I was collecting the skins the cicada pupae moult when they emerge from the ground and become adults. We "picked" cicadas for an hour or so filling plastic shopping bags with the little buggers. They are resources for future artworks - I have done quite a series using them as my chosen material. When we finished we celebrated with a picnic of cold chicken. While eating I contemplated and realised it's not everyone's Mum who would help pick cicada skins (but I must admit it's not the worst thing she has been roped into.)              

                     

 

I photographed these as I realised they represent at least 3 or 4 different species. The tiny one I have never come across before and only measured around 15mm, half the size of the largest cicada.

 

My "Cicada Tree" above was a work I completed last year as part of my Advanced Diploma.

White Godwit

Every year around September/October the Ohiwa Harbour receives up to 3,00 visitors from Siberia. They fly direct on a journey that takes them 9 days and during that time they don't stop to eat or drink. They are Bar-tailed Godwits and they make the longest journey of any migratory bird. Once they arrive at Ohiwa they spend the summer getting fat on the abundance of molluscs and worms that thrive in the shallow waters of the estuary.
  Late last year I received a phone call from my friends Meg and Mike who live overlooking the harbour to say there was a white Godwit among the flock. They kindly lent me a kayak and I paddled off at high tide to get some photos. The birds disperse to feed at low-tide and during high tide they park up in a large flock on the sand spit to rest.
  It wasn't easy getting the photos as the white bird was right in the centre of the group. When I finally got a little close and spooked them into flight I noticed the pale godwit did have some colouring so it confirmed that the specimen was an example of Leucism rather than Albinism. In albinos there is a total absence of pigment and these individuals tend to be less robust in terms of health. This white bird looked to be in fine form, a very healthy Godwit and quite beautiful.

                           Ohiwa Harbour

                            White Godwit

 

                            Black backed Gull

                            White faced Heron and Shag

                            A Godwit wearing a leg band. (AHS)

 

                              Godwit food! (yuck)

Mangrove Seeds

I helped Troy out on a photo shoot on the Ohiwa Harbour yesterday. It was low tide and I collected a handful of mangrove seeds. There are lots of mangroves in the harbour, so many they have started silting parts of the estuary up.

Now and then they are cut back to keep them in check. They spread when their seeds float away on the tide and are washed up on the mudflats, little green explorers in search of new lands.

Weta leaves

I've been playing around with these large leaves. I have created a couple of these wetas and I'm thinking a number of them would look good together. I like that there is a certain unpredictability about the leaf - what will happen when it dries and turns brown? How will it look? Will it crinkle and warp?
  The shape of the insect is part of the leaf with the negative spaces reminiscent of the holes insects make when the leaf is chewed. A bit of fun to create.

Collections, Series II

My work "Collections, Series II" has been selected and hung as a finalist in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Awards for 2014. Yay! I didn't feel I could handle a large canvas when I began it in December so I decided to paint a collection of found objects and work on them as separate little paintings. It earned the nickname "liddle fings" and I collected up shells, bones, feathers, moths, seeds.......all the little scraps of interestingness that you find while wandering the wild areas and parks, even the back yard. And then I decided I had to include some little nasties. Objects made of plastic and other pollutants that are always there among the shells on the beach or wherever you are. I included only 3, a plastic peg, a battery and a cigarette lighter. These three represent the insidious waste products we manufacture every day to poison out earth. I didn't want them to be too overbearing so they are carefully placed within the composition. There are 81 little canvases, each 3 inches wide by 3&3/4 inches high. The image below doesn't include the frame as I photographed it before I took it to my framer. I've also included a couple of detail shots.

 

 

 

I'm trialling a new website too. You can check it out here.

                                       http://hague-art.wix.com/mandy-hague-artist#

Herons in lake Ohope

There is a large puddle in farmland at the side of the road before the turnoff to the Ohope Spit. Locals have nicknamed it "Lake Ohope." In the middle of summer it dries out completely but after a run of wet weather it could by some stretch of the imagination be regarded as a little lake although I think "pond" is more like it. No matter what the size it always has lovely reflections and there are often ducks, plovers, oystercatchers or stilts there. Never all at once though, and usually just a pair of birds. Yesterday there were herons feeding. Worms I'm guessing. I just had to stop to take these shots.

 

Flounder in Plaster.

I've been getting my hands mucky this weekend. Playing around with some flounder as part of my work for The Learning Connexion Art School. My intention is to make 4 or 5 and create a series looking at camouflage. After making my casts from Plaster of Paris I've decided I should have used latex. I'll have another go later on in the week. An interesting thing tho.... I photographed the impression made by the flounder which was a negative space but when you view the photo your brain reads it as a positive form.
 Weird!

 

I'm Back!

I've had a bit of time off from my blog. A bit of time measured in years rather than weeks for one reason or another. Mainly because I thought it had gotten a bit boring due to things repeating. That's what happens with seasons. Early spring there are ducklings, in summer there are cicadas yada yada yada...but actually that's what I like about life. As tenuous as it seems sometimes. So here I go again with my blog but I intend incorporating my art a bit more. I am only months away from finishing my Advanced Diploma with the Learning Connexion Art School which is very exciting. So I'll be adding my thoughts and explorations about my studies.

Cuddly caterpillars

I think Monarch caterpillars should have been designed much larger as they would be nice to cuddle. They are soft and snuggly but I guess those sucky feet could be a bit off-putting. And they eat so much that they would be difficult to sustain nutritionally if they were a couple of foot long. OK, I concede, maybe they are best small.

A Barrel of Bees

Troy and I have just spent two awesome weeks in the South Island. I took a few hundred photos and so far I haven't even begun to sort through them. I'll share as soon as I can. Til then here's the drama that's unfolded in the last few days.

  When we left there was a family of young starlings being raised in the oak whiskey barrel sitting on our front porch. I figured they would have fledged by the time we got home but I never expected that a hive of wild honey bees would take their place!

A steady trickle of bees were coming and going in the busy manner that bees have. Now I like bees and I'm well aware they are in a dangerous decline worldwide due to sprays and poisons among other things. Bee stings I'm not so keen on - actually I'm a big sook when it comes to that so I was wary about having a hive three feet from my front door. It was lucky one of Troys best mates Misho is a bee-keeper so between the two of them they worked out a plan to move the hive without the total destruction of our barrel. It was tipped upside-down and Misho cut a hole with a skillsaw (meanwhile we were safely inside cowering in the kitchen - I took this shot through the sliding door.)

However after Misho assured me the bees were not going to attack I was brave enough to get this shot looking down thru the hole in the barrel, the whole interior was covered in bees!!! Double click on the above photo to enlarge, its kinda freaky!

A bunch of bees were collected from the barrel interior and dropped into a bee box. Misho then somehow found the queen amongst all those hundreds of bees and put her in the box then put the lid on. He then collected as many bees as he could and deposited them outside the box. By nightfall they had all moved into their new quarters to be close to their queen!

Unfortunately the honeycomb couldn't be saved but Misho placed the broken pieces in front of the bee box as the bees eat up the honey so they can use it in the new hive! Pieces of the remains of the starling nest were gummed up in the sticky mess.

Some of the honeycomb is used to house the young bees in the grub stage, some is used to store honey and some stores pollen (if I remember correctly.) A few bees got drowned in the honey when the hive was tipped upside-down but all in all it was a successful relocation. I was amazed at how much honeycomb the hive had made in less than two weeks. All in all it was quite fascinating learning how they work. In a couple of days Misho will add another layer to the bee box then take them to his place. And in a few weeks Troy and I will get a share of the lovely golden honey! Mmmm-mmm. A shame we couldn't leave it in the barrel, we could have had whiskey flavoured honey. But then again it would probably have had overtones of starling poop....eeeeyew!

Caspian Tern struggles with Eel

Caspian Terns are the largest species of tern found in New Zealand and are conspicuous by their bright red beak. They are common residents of the lower Whakatane river and can be spectacular to watch as they perform vertical dives for small fish.

 The other day I was surprised to see one with an eel which was still very much alive and wriggling. The tern was having a hard time holding on to it and the eel kept getting loose and free falling.

The bird wasn't going to let its meal get away and employed some cunning acrobatics to reclaim its dinner.

 I didn't get to see the tern finally swallow the eel but I would suspect it won out in the end.

I have often watched shags trying to eat young eels and just when you think the bird has swallowed the eel it will wriggle back out again! Sometimes the bird takes ages before it finally gets it all the way down. They must taste good to be worth all that effort!

Dotterel Relocation Project, Herepuru - Matata

The day after my epic trek up the coast line in search of dotterel I found out the Dept of Conservation had decided it was too risky to leave the birds where they were due to the threat of pollution. A few miles up the coast the container ship Rena was stuck on Astrolabe Reef and still leaking oil into the sea and it was just a matter of time before it reached the dotterel habitat. These birds are extremely susceptible to oil but it was still not a decision the experts reached lightly.

 DOC dotterel experts were flown in and were met by local resident John Groom who has monitored the population here for at least ten years. I was fortunate enough to catch up with them at Herepuru and watch John Dowding in action.

 

Here he guides the bird towards the capture net. You can just see the dotterel right of centre on the sand.

 Within minutes the first dotterel was captured.

Its weight was recorded...

and an identification band attached to its leg.

 John Dowding is an ornithologist who specialises in these birds. He has such a gentle laid-back manner that seems to cause very little stress to the birds he is handling. The last I heard the team had caught 25 but were aiming for 40 with the captured birds relocated to Tauranga. I was priveleged to be there to witness their work and of course to get some photos. I'm just hoping the oil won't make it this far!