Lyall Bay Beach

Here's a pic of Lyall Bay beach, in the wind, with rough waves. Lyall Bay beach is officially at the far end of Miramar Peninsula and it is beside Wellington Airport. Oh, I'm still having trouble with pictures. And paragraphing. And spelling as per usual.

bird-spotting (but only cute birds)

Okay,I admit it; I like cute birds.  Lots of times when I'm on guided hikes and everyone stops to stare breathlessly for what seems like hours at some plain old bird sitting on a branch or another bird that's dawdling across the track, I do tend to get bored after, well, 10 seconds.
But give me a cutie-pie chick or duckling and I'm all agog and can watch for hours. 
J, my swimming pal, told me that she always keeps a camera on her car, so I thought "Why not?  I have an old digital camera.".
In February on my way to Whakatane, I found parent swans with their babes (cignets?) on the shores of Lake Rotoiti.  The mama and papa were a bit scary ("Get away from me!  Get away!") but, oh goodness, I wanted to scoop the babies up and cuddle them to my ample bosom.

Last Sunday, I'd parked my car at the bottom of the (horrific) zig-zag to the right side of Lyall Bay beach, and was prepared to stagger up the zig-zag to get to the main track over the hills.  As I gathered up my drink bottle, backpack, rain-jacket, rain-pants, phone, cardy, beanie, cap, sunblock (after all, the hike would take me all of, perhaps, two and a half hours! - I had a bigger bag than when I went to England for  6 weeks - my bag then weighed only 3kg).  I glanced out the front car window and saw there was a huge amount of water in the gutter that was about three metres long- and there were a dozen or so birds - blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows - bathing happily in the water.  They were splashing and squeaking, and having a fine old time.   I just managed to get off one photo before a car came in front of me and disturbed them.