Tarapuruhi | Bushy Park, Whanganui October 2025

We drive over in the rented Rav4, listening to Eric Clapton and Paul Simon and Sting. We drop mum at Whanganui’s Saturday markets and head to Tarapuruhi | Bushy Park. It’s after nine, brisk, slightly overcast, alternating calm with a gusty breeze. We wind the rental car windows down as we enter the bush-lined driveway, and are greeted by a chorus of tīeke | saddleback, thrush, manu pango | blackbird, tūī | parsonbird, korimako | bellbird. The chorus doesn’t really stop all morning. We’re surrounded. Several vehicles have arrived before us. “It’s too busy,” dad says.

We rig our cameras and head toward the picnic area along Twin Ponga Loop to the hihi | stitchbird feeders. Three people are at the first station, turned away from the feeder and photographing tīeke shrouded in kawakawa. We join them, it’s a bit frenetic, the first bird sighting of the day.

Once the tīeke is away, we chat, comparing cameras; and rebuild some perching places around the feeder. Five is a crowd, so dad and I move on, pausing to watch a toutouwai | robin in the deep bush. Cockatoo swoop and screech overhead.

The second feeder is full of life. Hihi and tīeke and pīwakawaka | fantail flit about us, grubbing up trees and barrelling into the feeder. We sit for some time and watch and snap. Many of the tīeke are young, some with barely a wattle. All of the hihi we spot are banded. Magic.

We head back up Twin Ponga Loop and down the Wetlands Loop. Tūī flit vigorously between us and through the remnants of the kowhai flower, chasing each other and anything else they can find to chase. Tīeke line the switchback trail. Toutouwai pop out along the track. Kererū | wood pigeon feature at each corner of the track.

We reach the wetlands and find the same three photographers we’d met earlier, once again in a tīeke frenzy. We join the frenzy for a moment, before continuing to the lake. Toutouwai join us and kahū | harrier, cockatoo, and kererū swoop by overhead.

We loop twice around the lake, back up to the car, and out to Upokongaro for the umu kōtuku | night heron.

We pick mum up at Farmers and drive out to The Cafe Behind The Door on 4, arriving around half one. I order lunch while mum and dad scope out the Holm Oak that the umu kōtuku nest in. There’s a faint glint of feathers in one of the upper nests, but that’s it. So we eat.

And then Paul Gibson arrives. We’ve met Paul several times before – mostly at Te Awahou | Foxton. He has published several books on birds of Aotearoa, including Rare Beauty – Nankeen Night Heron in New Zealand (topical), and Birds New Zealand – Beauty Like No Other. Paul orders coffee and sits beneath the Holm Oak with his friend, Jim. They’ve got their camera gear – which means we’ve a solid chance of spotting the umu kōtuku. We reintroduce ourselves. Paul mentions that now – 2pm – is the best time to spot the dozen or so resident nankeen night heron here. Half are adults, half fledged last year. They’ll be up in the trees along the bank or perched on a log by the river. Fifteen minutes in, I realise I’m looking at a juvenile umu kōtuku. I let out a yelp, and I’m suddenly surrounded by photographers, snapping away together. It’s a frenzy. Paparazzi. Very special. Even mum gets caught up in the moment.

Paul thinks he can show me some adult umu kōtuku. He offers to drive me round to the far bank and cut our way down. I take up the offer, and we head off in his Suzuki Jimny – Paul’s birding vehicle. We park, cut down the bank, through an unpleasant quantity of thistle, and sure enough, the dozen or so local residents are all hidden along the banks of the Makirikiri, flushed out by our clumsing along the stream bank, back up into well obscured perches high up in the plane trees beside the stream. 

What a treat. And very generous of Paul to hang around in the hopes of giving me a glimpse.

Our bird count is over 30 by the end of day one of our birding adventures. We've walked a little over six kilometres over three hours at Tarapuruhi, and I've snapped around 2,000 photographs.