Turning inland

Today we flew from Auckland to Queenstown. Although we were warned about possible disruption or delay to our flight, from the time we checked in until we boarded the plane at the correct time, the flight was quite uneventful' indeed rather quicker than anticipated.

It is a lot colder here than in Auckland, and I'm glad we brought some warmer gear. Already met a number of friends. The welcome gathering is less than an hour away, and we will meet more of my graduating class from many years ago. Some have returned from England, USA, Canada, Australia, although most seem to be NZ based.

I have put up as an extra, a photo of a group of gulls. They have black bills, and red legs. Their bills appear longer and thinner than the red-billed gulls, which have black bills when young, but their legs are not black. On balance therefore, I figure these must be juvenile red-billed gulls which are common, whereas the black billed gulls are critically low in numbers.

26 November 2019
I have seen a post of black billed gulls on Birds Auckland, and looked up the ID for these birds. Rather than juvenile red-billed gulls, these are likely to be juvenile black-billed gulls.