I’m driving from Rotorua to Auckland. It’s a trip I’ll make countless times, backwards and forwards, from my home base to where most of my life happens. Renting in Auckland doesn’t make sense when I’m only there for field trips, not the daily schedule of University. So I moved home, filling my already packed childhood bedroom with six years of independent living. There’s a toaster on my bedside table (it’s not plugged in).
On the way I stop at Pūkorokoro Miranda. It’s not the godwits that draw me here this time – it’s May and all the breeders have left for Alaska. Abby left her binoculars at the Shorebird Center when she stayed a few nights back, so I’m picking them up for her. The car park near the main hide has suffered a slew of thefts recently, so I give it a miss, and after picking the bins up from Keith Woodley, I head for a little caravan siding on the shellbank, Ray’s Rest, looking out over the mudflats. It’s midday-ish. The light is hard as titanium, the tide all the way out. There are shadows scurrying through ruts in the mud. I wander to the edge – where shelly sand meets silty mud, and lie down. Wrybills. One of our specialities – the only bird in the world with a sideways-bent beak (always to the right). It’s not great light for photographing, but I’m never precious about light. I work with what there is.
The birds don’t come too close, and photos of individuals poking around in the mud are lacklustre. But something stirs, and suddenly they’re all in the air, a bevy of peeping flapping forms that fly straight into the sun. The light turns brown mud silver, the birds little black flecks in the gleam. The world in monochrome. It’s a shorebird scene, birds in the air, birds in the mud.
I will get better photos of wrybills later in my journeys. But coming away with something unlooked for today has reminded me that from imperfect conditions we can make something different – something we didn’t expect. It’s a lesson I learn time and time again, as the birdventure progresses and things never quite turn out the way I’d hoped or planned. That’s life. That’s wildlife photography. And it makes the times things do miraculously go to plan all the more special.
