Karearea (NZ falcon) on the No. 1 Line track

The demands of work and the wild spring weather meant I hadn't been for a walk up No. 1 Line for almost a month. It felt like an age and probably was.

Today I finally made it up there. I sat at the top in the blustery wind, writing a little while the water heated, then sipping Lapsang Souchong. I watched patches of sunlight drift across the far mountainside and listened to the wind and a little riroriro somewhere a long way off, and I remembered the pipiwharauroa I'd heard yesterday — the first this spring — and wondered how many riroriro would end up raising pipiwharauroa chicks instead of their own this summer. 

A little light hail tapped at the hood of my parka on the way down, but it amounted to nothing. Near the bottom of the track I heard a bird call — a tui, I thought. But it didn't sound quite right, even allowing for the huge range of calls tui can make. I heard it again and became even more convinced it wasn't a tui. I thought I knew what it might be, so I retrieved the camera and headed off the track. 

I was right. This was one of two karearea — New Zealand falcons — sitting high in a massive dead tree. The whole time I photographed them and watched them through the binoculars, they said nothing. Just those two calls as I came down the track, as if they were calling out to me rather than at me. 

I'd like to believe they were saying, 'Welcome home, Pete'.

[14 September 2013, Panasonic Lumix GH1, 100–300 mm at 300 mm, ISO 200, 1/320 at f5.6]

All content © 2013 Pete McGregor