The above, equals happiness for the below.
I have been extraordinarily lucky this weekend.
On Saturday morning I rode out through Bethalls Quarry and Scenic Drive with Wayne, The Croc, Warren and Serge. The pace over, like the company was pleasant and easy. Up the quarry I lit the blue touch paper, and for a change my own fireworks were less than a damp squib. Onto Scenic Drive I eased, but some of the others from our company charged on. I was saving my legs for the expedition I had planned that afternoon on foot.
After we reached the top of Scenic Drive, and I had a fossick in the roadside gorse for the bottle of scotch that I placed there in June, I did come away empty handed, Serge and Warren rolled back the way they had come, and the Croc, Wayne and I snaked down the descent of Forest Hill Road, and then back to town by the very pleasant bike path, all the way in from Henderson. No traffic issues for us, it is a truly
benign way to snake in from the outer west.
My return expedition into the Waitakeres on Saturday afternoon was a delight, the highlight being the brief visitation of a Kaka while I was on a spur between steep grunts. It was wonderful to see and hear one of these chaps in the Waitakeres. I have had a mob around me before, like unruly schoolboys, but that was on the Eastern Coromandel. Several years ago, at dawn, I saw a pair on Sandringham Road, by Gribblehurst Park, but this is the first time in a while I have seen one out west. I was delighted.
The final stanza of unexpected joy was on Sunday afternoon, while I waited up a valley out of Piha for my scion to finish up his camp. As I sat, I had camera in hand, with a decent long lens, nearby was flax flowering, and I waited. Soon the territory master, a Tui appeared. Initially to chase the brace of Starlings from the prime food source, the flowering flax and it's nectar. On returning from that sortie, the Tui discovered a Myna was trying it's luck, so more whirring action required.
Rivals dispensed with, the Tui returned to start feeding, and I got lucky with the camera. It maybe a box ticking exercise, as I sure ain't a twitcher, but I have long wanted to snap a Tui on a Flax infloresence. Today was the day, a little longer lens would have been a nice luxury, but I'm happy anyway.
That done, and I looked up to see a Kereru swoop through, across the sky, I turned and nailed a Don Binney moment.
Sometimes, it just is.
