14 October 2016

Tui at Pauatahanui

At the Plimmerton end of Pauatahanui Inlet we stopped briefly but walkers with babies in pushchairs and dogs meant birds were scarce. I did photograph this tui but held out little hope the result would be OK because the bird refused to come low enough so I could avoid the bright grey sky as a background. However, some judicious processing helped by a relatively low ISO meant I was able to salvage this photograph.

The yellow around the base of the upper bill is pollen from the kowhai flowers from which the tui had been sipping nectar.

[1/400 sec at f5.0, ISO 250]



All content © 2016 Pete McGregor

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

Looks a tad ruffled.

gz said...

looks a bit wary..but a good image

pohanginapete said...

Zhoen, they seem to like ruffling. I think it's part of their great variety of displays, although I don't know what it means (but as long as other tui do, that's what matters).

Thanks gz. Tui always seem alert; whether it's wariness or curiosity isn't certain.