Ok, I realize I these last few posts are pretty sloppy, but I am getting behind in putting up some photos. I have some thoughts to put down about living and working in another country and culture, but they will have to wait.

Here are some photos from a trip we took to the Miranda Shorebird Centre. It is about an hour drive from Auckland. It is across the Firth of Thames from Coromandel Penninsula. The area is apparently one of only a few in the world that is called a Chenier Plain. Over time, heaps of shells are washed up on the beach, the heaps get so high that they eventually cut off pools of water from the ocean. These pools fill with silt and eventually become swampy land. Over time, more and more of these heaps of shells build up, creating a series of shell hills with intervening silt flats. Mangroves grow in these areas. The best views of birds we had was in a flooded farmer’s field, rather than at the centre.