WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
An International Display of Feathered Beauties
Birds of our backyard
What began as a hobby of my mom’s and a teasing laugh from my side whenever she’d walk around with the binoculars in the campground pointing surely at the trees and not the homes turned into a very special relationship.
The photographer in me doesn’t just find joy in capturing roses and wild coastlines but also loves the challenge of catching moving objects. Wildlife in wilderness places is a favorite. And if I can’t get those bigger mammals, I learned to zoom in on those feathery animals.
And send each photo for my mom to identify.
Surely I could just download a bird identification app and would have a result much quicker. But life isn’t always about the quickest way from A to B.
Life is about those things in between.
Like the relationship of a mother and her daughter.
I might not be as interested as she is in what bird it is but I am very much interested in keeping our relationship very much alive and thriving and I know for sure I’m not the carefree kind of daughter. I might be low-maintenance but causing lots of heartbreak and sad feelings every time I step into a plane to fly a thousand kilometers across the globe to set up a new home somewhere abroad.
Leaving behind a mother who might be more homesick than the girl who’s miles away because part of her is far away.
And yet. She’ll never complain. She’ll say she lives it all through me even if she wouldn’t want to do half of the stuff I did and still do.
So the least I can do is send some high-quality photographs of some endemic or not-so-endemic birds that force her to flip the pages of her bird books and search online for just the right name of my captured species.
She searches while hiking in the Alps or when driving home from a shopping tour with my dad. The joy she has finding the species I can read in her responses. They increase with the certainty of an identified bird.
And I, on the other hand, can share my photographs out here in a community of avid bird watchers with the help of my mom’s knowledge and research.
It’s a win-win, right?
Are these all sparrows, right?
So here we go. I’m starting with a category I called sparrows. Yes, there are some common birds I can identify myself and some I remember from previous searches. But this group is called the sparrows as I was asking my mom if they are all the same bird species but she denied it.
Two dunnocks were picking in the grass out front of our unit in New Zealand. Yes, many of these birds are native European birds that were brought over by the early settlers.
But not the next one. While he looked like a sparrow to me, its head was certainly too bright and too red to be one. It’s a finch as my mom classified and identified him as a common redpoll.
A bunch of them were sitting on the wires in the vineyard chirping about the day as I was taking a stroll exploring the property we now live on.
One of them stood out to me and looked a little more colorful than the others. Certainly not a sparrow, right?
No, it’s from the same family as the one above known as the common goldfinch or simply goldfinch. Another European settler who found a home on these once predator-free islands down South.
Here he is, the sparrow. That one I got right.
European settlers
Just some blackbirds. Like everywhere. They are making noise, always pull attention to themselves and sit somewhere up high to have a better view on supervising their property.
But, looking at it I’m not convinced the one on the far left is a blackbird. I didn’t send this image to my bird identifier…
A bird I’ve last spotted and identified (without additional help from mom) on a road trip in Czechia always attracts my attention with a lovely song often used and referred to in poetry.
The song thrush is another bird that has migrated to New Zealand from the West Paleartic which includes the land from Europe, North Africa, northern and central parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and part of temperate Asia, roughly to the Ural Mountains (Wikipedia).
Birds on water
I know, they are just some ducks but they are birds regardless.
The couple I spotted on the pasture next to a small river in the hills is a pair that won’t separate. Paradise shelduck mate for life and both genders have stunning plumages.
These goose-like ducks are also known under the name of paradise duck or pūtangitangi in Māori and they are endemic to New Zealand, unlike a lot of other birds found on the islands.
The next species attracted my attention not due to their calls or looks but because of the nests they built. Spotted on Lake Wānaka, these ducks made their homes on painted boat docks. How amazing is that?
These water birds migrated all the way from Sweden and are known for their elaborate mating display. The great crested grebe lives near the water’s edge and both partners contribute to the nest-building process.
I watched what might have been a short sequence of a mating ritual as one bird was sitting on the nest, turning in circles and displaying its feathered neck while the other one was watching from the water down below.
Native and spotted
Being given the ‘Bird of the Year’ award the first time it was issued in New Zealand in 2005, the next one is a special creature. The name derives from the native Māori language and it’s a medium-sized bird native to the area.
When it first landed on the feeder of our landlord, I thought it was just a migrant blackbird but I quickly spotted the white bag hanging off its neck unique to him.
The tūī is a honeyeater bird and is one of the largest species in the archipelago. My landlords told me to wait for a sunny day and see their in fact very colorful feathers shining in the sunlight. I can’t wait for that.
My mom said she couldn’t find this raven type of bird but just like when she often talks too quick, she now wrote the sentence too early. Of course, she found the bird.
The Australian magpie must have been blown across from the large sister continent with the strong westerly winds and is now home on the archipelago of New Zealand.
And how about this one? He looks very fluffy sitting in the tree staring at me through the glass doors. I thought we have privacy out here in the vineyards but those birds are constantly watching.
What appeared to me as an obvious sparrow was identified by my mom as a native bird even though my picture didn’t offer much detail.
A New Zealand pipit she guesses which is a tiny bird home to the open land and outlying islands.
“It is a bird of open habitats such as grassland, farmland, roadsides, dry river beds, sand dunes and open woodland. It forages on the ground for small invertebrates such as beetles, spiders and insect larvae. It will also eat seeds such as those of grasses.” — Wikipedia
The American migrant
David had looked outside our patio doors when he said “there’s a kiwi”. In disbelief, I denied his bird spotting and confirmed my statement once he said it flew off.
Thanks to Tim Ward,‘s detailed and informative New Zealand posts I’ve been reading, I learned a lot about the country, its inhabitants and the flora and fauna. And I do know, that the Kiwi can’t fly (anymore).
As I stepped outside, I saw these birds again. The ones that stood out to me before due to their curving crest drooping forward. The California quail is a ground-dwelling bird native to California that has been introduced to New Zealand.
They are highly sociable birds often flocking in “coveys” for a daily dust bath where they will select an area with soft grounds. Using their underbellies, they burrow downward into the soil and then start to wiggle while flapping their wings kicking off dust into the air.
Thank you for reading until the end. It is much appreciated. A shout-out goes to fellow writers and avid bird watchers as well as excellent photographers who have inspired me over the years to get more into this topic.
Erika Burkhalter | Dennett | Barb Dalton | Kim | K. Barrett | Warren Thurlow
Join my email list here if you would like to read more photo essays.
Shutterstock | Instagram | YouTube | Mailchimp | Amazon | Redbubble