Tiritiri Matangi Sanctuary visit

Visited the open wildlife sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi Island yesterday with fellow photographer  Mark and had an absolutely wonderful day taking photos of the numerous native birds found on the Island.

All I can say is ‘Wow, what a bird photographers and for that matter nature lovers paradise!!’

Tiritiri Matangi is a 220 hectare island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf that had most of its native flora and fauna destroyed by previous Maori and European settlements, before a replanting programme in the mid nineteen eighties set about trying restore its original habitat with the planting of some 250,000 native trees and the re-introduction of numerous New Zealand bird species.

We were very fortunate to visit the Island at the time of the year when the large areas of New Zealand Flax are flowering and thus providing a banquet for the local nectar-eating Tui, Bellbirds, North Island Saddlebacks and Red Crowned Parakeets.

We will be going back and are already making plans to return in the not to distant future.

A gallery of bird photos from Tiritiri Matangi Island can be viewed here

Here is a list of the birds that we saw

Variable Oystercatcher

Brown Quail

North Island Saddleback

Red Cowned Parakeet

Welcome Swallow

Red Billed Gull

Blackbacked Gull

Tui

Bellbird

Whitefronted Tern

Pied Shag

Brown Teal

North Island Robin

Takahe

Paradise Duck

Australasian Gannet

Wood Pigeon

This entry was posted on Monday, November 22nd, 2010 at 9:52 pm. It is filed under Birds, New Zealand, North Island, Wildlife and tagged with nature, New Zealand, New Zealand Birds, wildlife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.