I had the great pleasure of sharing the great yet simple experience of kayaking on the Opawa River and mouth of the Wairau River with a recent visitor to our country. Carlos Urrea from Colombia was visiting Marlborough on business and a friend referred him to our kayak tours. As you will see from the photos we had a great time and some brilliant up close birding that had our cameras snapping. (Click on the gallery photos above to get an enlarged photo).

There is very good birding on the river currently with plenty of royal spoonbills, banded dotterels, white faced herons, various tern species, black shags, pied shags, little pied and black shags, spotted shags and pied stilts. There have been great numbers of kingfishers up and down the river. The ‘good omen’ the Kotuku or white heron has been seen. Also we are pleased to report that the glossy ibis vagrant now has a mate and the pair can bee seen flying into our wetland at dusk.