Whakamaru Dam In Full Flow

We've had a lot of rain over the last few weeks.  More than anyone wanted.

Grass is growing - but it's to wet to mow.  Weeds are growing - but hard to find a dry morning to attack them.

But there has been one good side to this - the water was let through the sluice gate (or whatever they call these things) at the Whakamaru dam for several days.

The image above and below is from the bottom of the sluice where the water rejoins the river. I never seen it quite this wild. The air was saturated with water and I got wetter than a duck in a downpour getting these shots.

Above and below here show the view from the top of the dam looking down onto the sluice way and the river beyond.

The river is normally quite tranquil beyond the dam but you can see that the waves are just about submerging the tiny island.

Certainly added a new level of interest to the morning walk for a few days.

North Island Kaka

Wow! Discovered a North Island Kaka in my garden this morning.

 Hard to see but it is about half way down the image and one third in from right hand edge.  A brown bird just above a cream colored flower.

 Here is a closeup of the NI kaka taken from the Tiritirimatangi site . Photographer, Peter Craw, obviously has the talent for getting a whole lot closer that I did!

The kaka is normally only found in large forest areas and is not usually seen then.  They are fully protected with only about 10,000 birds of both North Island and South Island kaka combined left. 

They enjoy nectar which is what he is doing in our Banksia tree.  The Banksia is actually an Australian native tree but I planted it because I know many NZ native birds enjoy its nectar rich flowers in the winter.  We always have lots of tuis and bellbirds in this tree but I have never seen a kaka before.

I've never seen one even in the wild so you can imagine my excitement when hubby's friend spotted this one.

I've been following his activity all morning - he is moving around our trees, visiting the 2 Banksia, a winter flowering gum and a vanilla tree and seems to be feeding from them all.  He might have just been attacking the bark for grubs in the vanilla tree.  Interestingly, none of these trees are NZ natives but that didn't seem to bother him one jot.

For any NZ bird fanciers who should read this post - our garden is at Whakamaru in the South Waikato and there are large areas of forest about 10 kilometres away with a few small tracts closer.  The kaka is certainly a bird that I never expected to find in my garden.

Long may he continue!

All Is Well

I know that with the recent earthquake in the South Island lots of my cyber-friends are concerned about how we are faring.

Hubby and I are fine.  We live in the North Island so are 500-600 kilometres away from the epicenter of the 'quake.  We slept right through it and never felt a thing!

However, what IS quite surreal is seeing all the images of the devastation on television.  These things happen in other countries - not your own.  Not sure why it is quite such a shock because NZ sits right on  top of several fault lines and we have frequent earthquakes.  Usually they are fairly small whereas this last one, at 7.1 was a biggy.

This link shows a few images.

We have built our tourism industry around boiling mud pools, geysers  etc - all a good indication of plenty of underground activity.  And we have harnessed all that activity to provide geothermal power.  So it isn't as if we should be surprised.

I live about 50 kilometres from Lake Taupo which produced the biggest volcanic eruption the world has ever seen about 1800 years ago.  So one of these days I will be in the hot seat.

But not today!