Hiho Hiho, it's back to the bay we go - Whanarua Bay Nov/Dec 202

 

Beautiful pohutukawa in the bay

We were delighted to be invited back to Whanarua Bay for a month to take care of Stanley, who we have looked after before, and his duck brothers and sisters. 

Indian Runners

The really cool thing about the timing of this sit was that there was seven new hatchling ducks that had been incubated.  They were between a week and two days old when we arrived. During the month we cared for them, they grew from this ....

to this ....

Tentatively venturing into the wide open space
the day we opened their enclosure

With a little help from their friend and enthusiastic babysitter, Stan

We provided shallow water baths so they 
could get used to playing in the water

One of the female ducks was also sitting on a clutch of eggs.  Ducks are notoriously bad mothers and we never expected her brooding to come to anything.  Nekminit, after coming home from a walk at the beach

We discovered mother duck had brought her six ducklings off the nest to greet us!

She was so proud of them and proved to be a very good mother indeed.  Over the month of this sit, a lot of research was done regarding the best care for all the ducklings and a lot of time was spent constructing safe spaces and safe paddling areas for them.  Stanley, of course, supervised all.

Oh, and one of the beauties of ducks = duck egg sponge and strawberries out of the garden .... made by James!

Stanley also enjoyed his first surfcasting experience.

But mostly, he just enjoyed chasing the seagulls.

Stanley loves eating fish and was delighted when we were able to catch him a feed.

James also went for a dive in the bay and whilst the water was colder than expected he certainly made it worthwhile.

Which meant we were able to enjoy one of our favourite crayfish dishes .... crayfish and wild spinnach with beurre noisette (burnt butter) sauce!  Nom nom.

Clare spent some time with some of the local women, demonstrating how to weave a flower out of flax - which is there is a plentiful supply of locally.  She also weaved her first wee bag from a Youtube video

We had a sad event too.  Attending a wee burial ceremony for Ina, whom we cared for last time we were in Whanarua.

RIP Ina, we loved you very much :-(

And on a brighter note, we had a playdate with this special little girl, Kuskus.  As Clare was busy knitting her a winter coat as she had lost hers somewhere along the way, she was able to have a fitting during the design phase.

Once we left Stanley and his bird brothers and sisters we moved just down the road for a few days to hang with Kuskus whilst her mum took advantage of our availability to take a short break.  The jacket got finished ....