A Morning on the Okarito Lagoon

 

We rented kayaks for the morning to explore the Okarito Lagoon.  It's apparently the only undisturbed Lagoon left in all of New Zealand.  There's a narrow channel going through the Lagoon but the rest is very shallow.  If you stray from the channel you'll get stuck so they've placed poles you follow.  

There were three couples who left at the same time.  The lone egret was hanging out at the harbour where we put in.

In the shallows we saw banded dotterel (lifer, endemic) and bar-tailed godwit (new for this trip but seen in Australia).  We didn't get closeup views, we'd just been told big shorebird = godwit, little shorebirds = banded dotterel.  But they were some of the surprisinhly very few shorebirds other than oystercatchers we saw on this trip.

Nice view of the Southern Alps  hiding behind those clouds:

A highlight of the morning was venturing up two small creeks leading into the Lagoon.  Gave us the African Queen vibe.

There were flocks of the usual forest birds in the trees

For a few minutes we chased a silly New Zealand scaup that kept running away in front of us.

Leo checking out the birds

Creekside vegetation

Another attempt at a selfie, wetland style

In the evening we ventured out again to the wetland trail and managed to call up a fernbird along with the usual woodland birds.  We got good looks at some pipipi and the tui and robins were their usual sociable selves.

South Island Robin