From the editor

I didn’t expect to see flocks of brightly-coloured parrots deep in the heart of Brisbane’s business district, so my first trip to Australia a few years ago was a lot louder and squawkier than I anticipated.

I certainly never thought I’d see a line of 10 or so pink and grey galahs sitting on a fenceline on my neighbour’s driveway, yelling at each other. I had to stop the car to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Turns out, small galah populations have been living wild south-east of Auckland for about 40 years.

Other local wildlife has also brought me to a halt. Last year, it was a huge maize paddock full of peafowl. There were easily 100+ birds: peahens, chicks, males in full tail, and – just to confuse things – a few turkeys. It’s a rare thing for peafowl to be seen in such large numbers when their normal pattern is small family groups. However, bird watchers at the nearby Miranda Shorebird Centre have observed this behaviour on other occasions.

I love birds, but possibly not as much as my parents do. They once organised an entire holiday around one rare bird. All the adult kōtuku (white heron) in NZ nest on a 30m stretch of the Okarito Lagoon on the South Island’s West Coast. The only way to see them is to take a special boat tour during the breeding season.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw three elegant white-feathered herons settle in my back paddock a few years ago. Kōtuku are seen on the Miranda shoreline, which is about 16km east of my block as the heron flies. I’ve spent the last few years thinking three of NZ’s rarest birds specially picked my block for a rest at the start of their 800km trip home. Until today.

You can imagine my disappointment while writing this to discover that those pretty visitors were actually white cattle egret, similar-looking birds, but slightly smaller, with a much shorter neck and thicker legs. I’ve spent the last hour staring closely at the blurred pictures I took that day, but it would seem my wildlife is pretty common.