OMG a Morepork (Ruru)

What a day! It was the Murchison A & P (Agricultural and Pastoral) Show Day today and I had entered some photos in the photography section. I hate seeing my work on display - it makes me uncomfortable - so I ran away for the day to Denniston where I was doing a recce for a school trip I am planning for my senior students.

Whilst walking down one of the old pathways, wandering along with my macro lens on looking for bugs, Kiwilizzie suddenly grabbed my arm and insisted she'd seen a morepork. In all my 50 years I've never seen one in the wild so I assumed she was imagining things. BUT SHE WASN'T! There, right in front of us, was a genuine morepork! See him close up.

Wow. To see one in the wild, during the day was so exciting I had to shed a wee tear - after I'd taken 80 photos of it of course. The first half a dozen were taken with my 60 mm macro lens - just in case it flew off before I could change lenses!

Amazing - and thank you Liz for spotting him :-). I owe you a vat of coffee for that one!

I wanted to blip a different angle from Kiwilizzie's (she well deserves first blip of this today as she spotted him), but here is another angle of him.

To top the day off my photos did well in the show. I entered 6 sections and came away with 4 firsts, 3 seconds and a third. Huge smiles all round!

Now what do I do with the photos? Funnily enough the only one I want on my wall is the one that came 3rd.

First places went to:
Land/Sea scape Le Bons Bay
Sport and Recreation Fishing off the wharf
Macro Bee on Flax Flower
Photoshop Christchurch Devastation