This week’s post was due to be the first in my South Africa /Botswana travelogue from September 2025 but I am just home from 2 days in paradise with my favourite ducks so had to share an image from this trip instead. Southern Africa can wait a week.
Whio/Blue ducks are marvellous creatures inhabiting mountain streams and rivers that are also home to trout, the reason I ended up in New Zealand. They have evolved perfectly to the habitat with colouration and shape mimicking the river rolled volcanic rocks. They can vanish in plain site but if you look carefully, some of the rocks have feathers.
I love mountain rivers and Blue ducks used to be an unlikely possibility until consistent trapping of predators allowed their resurgence. The first time I saw one appear on a rock next to me while fishing was such a surprise that I thought I had hallucinated it in the fading blue light of evening. They are now a reliably encountered delight to the point that I now prefer to sit with them than pursue trout with a fly rod.
Some of my most precious photographic memories involve whio/blue ducks. From my first solo hammock camping mission that achieved my first images with my Nikon D3s (the fly rod went along on that mission and resulted in a strong fish in cold fast water for another memory), through to a number of trips with and without Edin, and finally these past couple of days.
It’s quite hard work walking over rounded boulders, squatting and crouching to get appropriate foregrounds and backgrounds and waiting for hoped for behaviours. My smart watch always tells me I’ve had a stressful day despite it being pure joy and relaxation. It bases it’s assessment on my pulse rate which is high due to excitement, holding awkward positions and breath-holding to try and stabilise a long lens during slow shutter exposures. My stiff and sore legs remind me of the physical exertions but the memories and images are well worth any discomfort.
I have spent a bit of time recently reflecting on the influence some of my favourite bird artists have had on my approach to photography and putting together a presentation on this. The image in this post pleases me as it nicely shows the result of those influences. I may write a post expanding on this in due course.
Photo with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 800mm f6.3 VR S
