Miranda is often our last stop before returning home from a trip south. Here we soak in the hot springs before our final four-hour leg for home. Last evening, we had a group of travellers make our home bay their last stop before they returned to Miranda.
The bells of Christchurch Cathedral rang at midday to welcome the godwits back from Alaska after their 11,000 km nonstop flight. We saw it on the TV news, but, unbelievably, at almost the same time, a flock of about 100 circled and wheeled over our mudflats for half an hour. We've never seen them here before.
The tide was right for them to stop for a feed. Alas, some unthinking campers spooked them and they moved away to the south, probably for Miranda. But for a magic quarter of an hour we enjoyed the spectacle of their convoluted and exuberant flight in the last of the sun.
Every autumn the flocks fly right up to Alaska to breed and every spring they return to New Zealand. Each year there are new young ones coming down from the breeding grounds full of life and vigour. And each year some of the old ones just get tired or diseased and drop out of the flock. But the journeying community continues. . .
A bit like the human community, I guess…
Dad and his first great-great-grandchild, taken a few days before he died.
(I wish I could say I took the Godwits photo: it's from Brian Chudleigh)
(I wish I could say I took the Godwits photo: it's from Brian Chudleigh)
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