today was a naturey day. we started with a little skyping before heading off for a walk in our local nature reserve (and doing a few geocaches along the way)
we saw plenty of birds. here’s a pukeko
and this is an Australasian Magpie
the walk took us along the coast, and along the way we passed Grannies Bay. isn’t it great that they encourage you to ‘explore and wander’ rather than stick to the paths ? And it’s also great to see the word ‘revegetated’ on a sign.
this (below) is looking back along Long Bay, which is our nearest beach
here’s a tui – easily identified by it’s white dangly neck thing. it also has a fantastic song which you can hear here (over on the right hand side of the page)
there was an amazing flowering pohutukawa which seemed to be glowing bright red it was so loaded with flowers
and we saw this fantastic bird with a little dangly feather over its face
no idea what it is, but it looks great. and wasn’t that bothered as we went by
after our walk we went and bought another boogie board so the supervising adult can board with esther and kezia. And i got some special water t-shirt thing. So i amazed everyone by going in to the sea with esther and kezia this evening for an hour before we had a picnic tea at Long Bay.
Oh, and in other news we also spent an hour in a local bank getting all four of us set up on the government pension scheme. It’s funny all four of us having tax codes, but even funnier setting up kezia and esther’s pension accounts. esther and i had a good conversation about compound interest.
tomorrow we’re planning on going up north to another nature reserve which has a lovely beach. i think the girls are trying to cash in on my new improved attitude to the beach before i go back to work on monday …