My Story

I grew up in the 70s on a small country road just out of Tauranga. The 1920s house of my childhood sat on a half-hectare plot of land with fruit trees dotted across the back section. Three of the four boundary sides were surrounded by open paddocks and orchards and back then houses were few and far between, unlike the urban sprawl that has engulfed the area today.

I have been fascinated by nature for as long as I can remember. My mother said I was always turning up with some creature that I had found while off adventuring around the neighbourhood, as kids did back then. My earliest memory of interacting with a native bird though, was out the back under a large plum tree. A little olive-green bird with white around its eyes sparked my curiosity, I wanted to know more and to get up close. From under that plum tree, I picked ripe fruit off the ground and carefully arranged them into a small pile. I pushed sticks into the soft soil and draped my Mum’s strawberry netting across them, leaving a small opening at one end. Looking back, I realise this was an early attempt at mist-netting[1]. With my net laid out I climbed up the large peach tree on the other side of the property which gave me a clear line of sight. Soon the little bird found the opening and I leaped from the tree, rushed over to the net, and captured what was to be my first close encounter with a silvereye. Reaching under the net the small bird filled up my cupped hands. When I opened them up to take a closer look, it sat momentarily, then flew off back to the plum tree.

[1] Mist netting is a process used by ornithologists and bat biologists to capture wild birds and bats for banding or other research projects. Mist nets are typically made of nylon or polyester mesh suspended between poles.

By the 80’s kiwifruit orchards had seemingly popped up overnight. Where once an open field of long grass, now were lines of wooden posts with wires attached and vines extending up to the sun. Summer holidays consisted of picking fruit which wasn’t much fun as a 6-foot-tall 13-year-old but did lead to my next memorable bird encounter. As I emptied my bag full of kiwifruit into the large wooden bin I was mesmerized by a small brown and pale-chested bird with a fan for a tail. The bird showed no fear, following me within a few feet of where I walked, flitting back and forth amongst the vines foraging for insects. I couldn’t believe how unfazed it was by me and of course, my curiosity soon got the better of me. Holding a short cane from the pruned vines out in front of me, I stood very still. Within minutes the inquisitive little bird landed on the stick, squeaked, and chirped, then darted off in a zig-zag flight chasing its next meal.

My first full-time job which didn’t include picking fruit or flipping burgers was as a photographic printer at a large pharmacy on Cameron Road in Tauranga City. I had no idea how to develop a film! The only camera I had seen was my mum’s old Instamatic 110 film camera. With an ‘I can do anything’ attitude I got stuck in and fumbled my way through this new adventure, watching closely as my mentor showed me the ropes. Within a few months, I was turning out snapshots of classic Kiwi holidays at the beach like it was second nature. I soon got a chance to try my hand at enlarging, which at the time was an all-manual process. Spending hours in the small darkroom lit only by a dim red light and thick with the smell of developing chemicals, I soon got hooked on creating large works of ‘art’. Customers seemed overwhelmed as they stopped in to collect their 11×14 hand-enlarged prints of their pet dog or sunset shot.

Adjacent to the pharmacy was a small empty shop that the owner had converted into a photographic studio. Twelve months had passed, and I had just received my Grade A Kodak printing certificate. I was eager to have a go at taking photos and printing them myself. The studio next door was fitted out with lights and hard cases full of camera equipment. As it was only open on weekdays, I could take the camera gear home over the weekends. Every weekend was spent driving around in my 70s Toyota SR Coupe (I wish I had kept that car) trying to find odd things to photograph. I started with the Nikon F-801, 35mm which had a 200mm lens. It was heavy and slow compared to the cameras of today, but it took a decent enough photo, even in the hands of a beginner like me. Soon I got to have a go in the studio on the Mamiya 645 Pro medium format film camera, which was set up with all the studio lights. Within a few months, I was out on photo shoots. Weddings and school balls were the focus of the small studio, and so saw the launch of my photographic career.

A few years later, having just been on a solo trip to Vietnam, I got back home to Tauranga armed only with my camera and backpack. With the generosity of some close friends, I parked myself on their couch. Some weeks had passed and with money fast running out, it became clear that to make ends meet I had to part with my much-loved Kowa Six medium-format camera which I had picked up second-hand some years earlier. Then my friend Chris decided he wanted a change from working at the Tauranga library, so we hatched a plan to load up his old Morris 1300 and move to the Capital. The year was 1993 and we found a damp flat in Devon Street in the heart of Aro Valley. This was the beginning of my love affair with Wellington and my next memorable bird encounter, where finally I heard and saw my first tūī. I was overjoyed to see this urban dweller with its shimmering black and blue feathers and fluffy white neck plumage feeding vigorously on a Pohutukawa tree close to the flat. This was despite Aro Valley being awash then with possums, where at night I would often be woken by the hissing bark of two brushtails at loggerheads as they tried to pass each other on the overhead wires of the bus lines.

Nothing much of interest happened between then and late 2002 (well, a graphic design career, running Wellington’s largest indoor dance party, DJing…) when I met my wife and best friend, Amber.

In 2010, Amber was parks manager at Wellington City Council, this allowed us to rent out the old Park house that sits at the foot of Mt Kaukau in Khandallah. The house was built in the late 1800s and its backyard consisted of 174 hectares of native bush and reserve which was a perfect place to bring up a young boy (our then 3-year-old son Jesse) in a large city. Damp, cold, and undoubtedly haunted, we embraced the history of this villa perched above the green suburb of Khandallah. It wasn’t long until we were overcome by native birds. Tūī, kererū, korimako, riroriro, tauhou, ruru, the 3 am squawk of the prehistoric sounding kākā and cries from NZ Falcon/kārearea flying around the house hunting down its food (which once included one of our free ranging chickens).

A couple of years into our stay we were blessed with a very rare visitor, a male Stichbird/ hihi. It had flown a long 8 km from the fenced Zealandia Wildlife Sanctuary, helped by a large Southerly storm. For nearly three months he would come daily to drink from our nectar feeder. One day he just never returned. We can only surmise the fate of this little bumble bee-coloured bird, but with the stream of cats wandering around we couldn’t help but go to a dark place. Incidentally, this male hihi was the furthest recorded outside the sanctuary at the time and quite possibly the only mainland sighting since 1883.

We also had a resident male bellbird who would serenade us daily with exquisite calls echoed across the valley. Bellbirds were locally extinct across large parts of Wellington until found again in the late 1980s and even then, were not in large numbers. Due to this bellbird living at our place for many years, a friend from Zealandia came and helped us band him so we could keep tabs on his movements. This brought back memories of my first attempts at mist-netting as a 7-year-old. Armed with a recorded call of the female bellbird it wasn’t long until he was captured in the soft net and soon was sporting Red over Pale Green (RPG) banding. Later RPG successfully mated and proudly showed off his three youngsters allowing me to get within a few feet of them as I snapped off photos. Just 14 days later he kicked the three kids out into the big wide world. Six years had passed when one day RPG never returned. Bellbird/korimako only lives for around 8 years so we hope he just came to the end of his natural life. We were so grateful he had chosen to live alongside us and happy to know the next generation will be carrying on his legacy.

During our time in Khandallah, I was lucky enough to pick up the contract for rejuvenating the Kererū Discovery project. It would turn out to be an amazing opportunity that allowed me to gain a comprehensive knowledge of this endemic species. I quickly grew to love these comical birds. Fully protected since 1921 it became my privilege to become an ambassador for kererū. I spent loads of time in one-on-one contact with kererū, taking photos of them wherever I ended up around Wellington. Spending so much time with a single species gave me the ability to understand behaviours not many people have seen. For one thing, I found kererū have a complex social structure, for example, females and males have distinct roles in nest construction and raising the young. One amazing experience was at Otari-Wilton’s Bush. I came across a male and female in the lower garden in the old kōwhai trees and after taking a few photos I noticed the female moving closer and closer to me. As she was feeding on the leaves, I decided to pick up a fresh stem and held it out, cooing softly to her. With some hesitation, she moved within a few inches of my tasty offerings, where she stretched out and started to feed from my hand. There is nothing else quite like having that kind of connection with a wild animal and this was a moment I will never forget. Fortunately, I was able to film it on my phone camera, so I shared it for all to see.

Seven years after moving into the Khandallah Park house it was time to say goodbye to the old girl. We bought a block north of Upper Hutt in Akatarawa, potentially the last place where Huia was seen.

A Mr CWG Betts made several reports in late 1923/early 1924 of huia he’d encountered in the Akatarawa River valley. This triggered an expedition party that spent several days searching in the area in February 1924.…. The last confirmed sighting of a huia was on 28th December 1907 in the Tararua Ranges, also north of Wellington. It’s likely a few stragglers persisted into the 1920s. Then lost forever to the history books. [http://blog.forestandbird.org.nz/hunting-the-last-huia/]

In 2017 we moved into our new house set amongst beech forest which backs onto Kaitoke Regional Park. Only 40 minutes’ drive from Wellington CBD it is surrounded by a completely new selection of birds. Having Whitehead/Pōpokatea was a real surprise! We had never expected to see them outside Zealandia. They come in for a brief time, moving in flocks through the top of the large beech trees. Long-tailed cuckoo/Koekoeā were next, which makes sense as the koekoeā uses the pōpokatea as the host bird to raise its young.

But no other bird in New Zealand is as cute as a Tomtit/Miromiro and this was another bird not found in Wellington City. These little balls of feathers are no bigger than the palm of your hand, weighing in at a mere 11g, they look as if they have flown straight out of an old Disney animation. The male in his smart black and white tuxedo with a white bow tie placed above his beak, and the female fluffy and cute all in grey and cream.

Tomtiti-Tom-Tom turned up at our door one day. A young juvenile male who had not long left his parents seemed to imprint on us and became a daily visitor. Every few hours he would come in and fly around to every window and door calling out for us, flicking his tail he would turn his head to the side peering through the glass waiting for us to come out and acknowledge his presence. Months passed and his mottled plumage of grey, black, and white matured into his black and white tuxedo. Our boy was all grown up. Tomtiti-Tom-Tom left us in mid-2018 to start his own family. This is the thing with wild birds, they come and spend time with you and leave without saying goodbye. We miss him to this very day.

No more than a five-minute drive from where we live is Mt Climie. Over 800 meters above sea level was where I came to have my first encounter with New Zealand’s smallest bird. The Rifleman/Tītipounamu is around 7 cm in length and weighs in at only 6 g. This busy little bird was a real treat to find. High-frequency pips fill the top of the beech trees as tītipounamu flit like tiny, horizontally falling leaves. The trademark of these small birds is the almost non-existent tail and the fact they just don’t stop moving. Without hesitation, I would say they have been the hardest birds to photograph, but it is an absolute pleasure to spend time with them in their environment. Incidentally the following week I also found them at the lower Tane’s track which saved an agonising 2-hour, 800-metre climb in 29-degree heat carrying a full pack of camera gear with one very hot panting dog (Juno) in tow.

Wellington region is teeming with native wildlife from the depths of the urban sprawl where tūī, kākā, kererū, kākāriki, ruru, korimako, pīwakawaka, riroriro, and tauhou have become a common feature in most gardens. If you live close to Zealandia you might even be the lucky few who get to have toutouwai, tītipounamu, hihi, or even tieke rummaging around in your planter boxes. Fernbirds/Mātātā, sacred kingfishers/kōtare, pied stilt/poaka, royal spoonbill/kōtuku ngutupapa, white-fronted terns/tara, and Caspian tern/taranui are just a few of the estuarine and sea birds you will find at places like the Pāuatahanui and Waikanae estuaries. Miromiro, pōpokotea, titipounamu, yellow and red-crowned kākāriki, and even kiwi, are all becoming more abundant in the Remutaka and Tararua Ranges surrounding Wellington and now Kiwi are even back in Wellington City itself.

I never feel like I need to go far to get my fix of nature as it surrounds us. I know one thing is for sure, it still has plenty more surprises to offer as I continue my journey with my family, dogs, and camera in hand.

Nothing much of interest happened between then and late 2002 (well, a graphic design career, running Wellington’s largest indoor dance party, DJing…) when I met my wife and best friend, Amber.

Seven years after moving into the Khandallah Park house it was time to say goodbye to the old girl. We bought a block north of Upper Hutt in Akatarawa, potentially the last place where Huia was seen.

I never feel like I need to go far to get my fix of nature as it surrounds us. I know one thing is for sure, it still has plenty more surprises to offer as I continue my journey with my family, dogs, and camera in hand.

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