It’s not hard to see a link between dinosaurs and modern birds when you live in New Zealand. This feels especially true when watching pukekos with their fierce looking beak, beady eyes, and T-Rex type posture.
This pukeko had a baby in tow. Which perhaps explains the glare on mum’s face (or maybe pukekos always look like that).
Of course it is much harder to imagine the baby pukeko as a fierce predator, we don’t tend to think of dinosaurs as ridiculously fluffy!
A great deal of excitement this week as I spotted my first ducklings of the season. 
This little guy or girl was swimming with his siblings in the Heathcote river near Aynsley Tce. A good size family, they have hatched at just the right time as the weather has gotten much warmer this week.
No doubt there will soon be many, many more!
Finishing up the Queen Charlotte Track we came out at Anakiwa. Just after the track finishes there is a caravan selling ice-cream, tea, coffee and the like. Outside this caravan was a small pig acting rather like a friendly dog. The pig would come up to anybody lingering around the caravan and didn’t mind being petted or even picked up.
The big difference between the pig and a dog was that dogs don’t generally snuffle so aggressively at your bag when they smell food, and the pig certainly did. It also would frequently roll around in the dirt like a sparrow having a dust bath.
Eventually it’s owner took it away as it was being a bit too naughty with people’s packs. Judging by the indent in the dirt where it was rolling around I would imagine this little piggy frequently visits that caravan.
Before starting the Queen Charlotte Track, our water taxi dropped us off at Motuara Island for a short visit.
Motuara island is a predator free haven (as it says in the brochure for the water taxi!) for native birds. One of these native birds is the Little Blue Penguin, an endangered species, that nests on the island. There were several green nesting boxes on the island, a couple of them with signs telling you what was likely to be inside. I carefully lifted the lid on one and was delighted to find two eggs!
I didn’t see any actual baby penguins, but I was still very excited to see the eggs. However judging by the amount of feathers in one box I think they must be very well used by the local population of Little Blue Penguins.
I visited an alpaca farm with a group of friends to photograph the baby alpacas that had recently been born there. Our host Martin gave us a tour, assuring the timid among us that they were not likely to spit or cause trouble. They were lovely animals, and aside from a curious few, they mostly ignored us. Some of the young alpacas were quite interested in the children that we had with us, following them and sort of galloping around them.
I was amazed at how different one alpaca could look from another. They have quite an interesting look and their different “hairstyles” make them feel oddly human-like.
This was especially the case when I noticed that some of them had what looked like a gold earring!
Walking past a small park today I noticed a family of three ducklings. They were happily paddling around the sheltered section of stream that runs through it. There was only one parent duck that I could see, and the ducklings looked to be adolescent.
While on a walk by the river I discovered a large family of paradise ducks. There were at least a dozen fluffy little chicks alongside their mother and father (Paradise ducks are usually found in monogamous pairs). The parents seemed almost oblivious to my presence as I got closer to snap some pics. This surprised me, as I had previously seen quite aggressive shows of behaviour from Paradise ducks. This being especially true if there are any interlopers around when there are chicks or eggs to protect.
Note that Paradise ducks are more correctly called Paradise Shelducks… see wikipedia for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_shelduck
I found these pukeko chicks feeding from a stream. Every so often the mum would feed something to one of them. It was very cute!
It’s duckling season in Christchurch right now so I went in search of ducklings at Riccarton House and Bush . These little guys were being fed by two schoolboys on their lunch break. They were making adorable little “peep peep” noises as they scuttled about.
The animals of Christchurch 