The Muriwai Gannet Colony is another of my favourite places that doesn’t require significant planning and expense to access. We had visited a few weeks prior to this trip and had great fun exploring some slow shutter effects with the flying gannets  so we decided to head west after disembarking from our trip to Tiritiri Matangi. Arriving at Muriwai we found the sea churned to a soup from the heavy southwesterly of the recent front and a cold wind still blowing. The one benefit was that there was plenty of space in the car park as no surfers were around. Conditions were completely different from our recent visit and with the cold wind I was half tempted to flag it but as usual persistence was rewarded with a range of different images. It goes to show what a rich site this is with a range of picture opportunities from sharp gannets on white to motion blurs and flash images against a colourful sunset. Adding these images to the ones from Tiritiri Matangi shows just what a versatile day of bird photography is available within a short distance of our major city.

All gannet photos with Nikon D810 used in 1.2x crop mode with Nikon 70-200m f2.8 VR2 lens. Flash photos with SB900 and SD-9 battery pack.