Blue Day, Reflections

Butchers Dam and lake on a perfect autumn day with clear blue sky and good reflections. Near to Alexandra in Central Otago. New Zealand. Flat Top Hill Conservation Area, dry land ecosystem.

Blue and Yellow

Autumn landscape beauty. Roxburgh, Central Otago. Yesterday afternoon. New Zealand

Park Hill Domain

Yesterday afternoon we took a rural drive along Switzers Road which follows a ridge through farm country and affords wonderfully extensive views to hills and mountains. Eventually we arrived at Park Hill Domain where I've previously taken a few photos from the road but we'd never driven into the public domain by the river. I...

Beauty and the Beast

These photos are from an exhausting bush walk we did on Friday 31 March from which I'm still in recovery! As we climbed I spotted many small treasures along the way, most often in the way that light was catching ferns, mosses and foliage to good effect.

Rising Rock

Castle Rock, at Castlerock. Southland, New Zealand. 26 March.

Cute Little Fella

Yesterday a curious tomtit came to check on us while we were enjoying a short walk in the native bush at Black Gully Reserve near Tapanui, West Otago. New Zealand. The tomtit is native, tiny, and in the case of the male bird.. quite colourful. This was a treat.. we don't often see birds in...

Stop for a Red

These fabulous red hot pokers required I ask Nigel to turn around and go back.. Kniphofia come in a range of colours but these are the true sizzling red-hot flower heads that look like they'd burn you! They were growing in front of a farm paddock near the gate, and right by the sealed highway....

Late Summer Colour

Getting close to autumn now and there's a colour shift in the landscape (e.g. some poplar trees are already yellow, other species are still green). Here are some native plants (not the rosehips!) that I enjoyed photographing on Saturday 25 February at Commissioners Track near the Roxburgh dam. Central Otago, New Zealand. Native flax with...

Colour Contrast

Magenta flowers blooming out of a patch of leaves covered in rusty, red, roadside dust. Photo by Martin @micron@mastodon.social

Spitting Image

When I was at Black Gully Reserve on 28 December, I found a spittle bug on a slender stem of a tree. I hadn't seen one of these so convenient to photograph before and it was fairly well-lit. It turns out they're pretty interesting creatures! Below the photo I'll give you a 'gift-link' to a...

Blue Gloss

Yesterday we returned to Commissioners Track and spent some time on part of it, mostly checking out the weeds and the native plants. We're right into summer now and lots of plants are flowering including grasses. We found some very pretty weed flowers, and some rather nice native flowers too. But today's post is about...

Big Bare Dam

A different dam in this post to the ferny one I've been showing, but it's also from the gold mining days and it's still an earth dam. The difference is that this one's in Central Otago and its inside wall is lined with rocks (the work is done wonderfully as one of the builders, David...