Whakanewha Regional Park

Wakanewha Regional Park is a new park set aside on the island. We attended its opening way back in February. Today we visited to walk on some of its trails. In addition, Ilona has joined the local photography club (the island has an amazing number of clubs!) and this months assignment is to provide a photo from Wakanewha. So the photos today are a little more artistic than the norm, though there is still enough Alexander to keep the grandmothers happy.

The hike took us to the location of an old "pa", or Maori fortification. You can see the dikes and other fortifications, though mostly you see pits where they stored sweet potatoes.

The birds in the pictures are either tuis (the blue-black birds) or dotterels (the ones on the beach). Dotterels are endangered, primarily because their mode of defense to to be colored like shell-covered sand and to sit on shell-covered sand. Modern dogs and cats are not fooled by this defense, so we are down to about 1500 of these birds, a good portion of which are in this park.

It is a large park and it appeared that the only person other than us there was a windsurfer.

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