My wife and I took a 'trip-of-a-lifetime' spending 3 weeks in January and February of 2005, traveling around the South Island of New Zealand, with a few days lazing around the beach at Fiji on our way home. We had contemplated a trip like this for many years, and finally decided to go for it. It really wasn't practical to take that much time off while I had a solo practice, but once my partner came on board last March, it freed me up and made this possible. We originally had thought of going to Australia, but essentially all of the people we spoke to who had been to both locations recommended New Zealand as the primary destination. We further decided to spend our New Zealand time exclusively on the South Island, which seemed to offer more in terms of landscape and wildlife. And even tough 3 weeks sounds like a lot of time, it really wasn't enough to even adequately cover this part of the country.

So we left our home, flew from Charlotte, NC to LA, then on to Auckland, and finally touched ground 28 hours later at Christchurch. I had dreaded the lengthy travel, but it wasn't as bad as I had expected. We then embarked on a more or less counter-clockwise loop around the South Island, generally staying only a night or two in any one location, with three nights in the Te Anau area. We had virtually no rain, but reminiscent of our trip to the Maine area for Atlantic Puffins, ran into quite a bit of fog. I guess this is almost inevitable when we're shooting birds on coastal locations!

I have posted 2 small collections of bird images, followed by one with landscape images, some non-bird wildlife photos, and a series of shots from a "Heli-hike" we took on Fox Glacier (which was an incredible experience). I'd like to offer a special thank you to Dennis Buurman of Albatross Encounters for providing the correct identification for a number of these birds.

I hope you enjoy seeing them half as much as I had taking them!

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White-fronted Tern	Red-billed Gull	Salvin's Albatross Take-Off

Salvin's Albatross Landing	Cape Pigeon in Flight - 1	Cape Pigeon in Flight - 2

Wandering (Snowy) Albatross	Antipodean Albatross Portrait	Antipodean Albatross in Flight

Pied Oystercatcher 1	Pied Oystercatcher 2	Variable Oystercatcher

Northern Giant Petrel	Northern Giant Petrel Landing	White-faced Heron Eating a Crab

White-faced Heron	Little Shag