Kaikoura seabird tour - Albatross Encounter

Friday 17th February

cows above South Bay

The siren, whatever it was, went off at 5am again, but we were soon back asleep. When we got up properly and had breakfast, we packed all our stuff into the car. I dropped Camilla off, then did a walk up to the lookout, where there were cows grazing, and down to South Bay.

At the Encounter centre we had lunch, then went on the Albatross tour — it was just us and one other couple.

This was pretty amazing. We were excited by our first albatross in the distance, but once we stopped and the crew started throwing chum overboard there were soon lots and lots of birds — the giant petrels and the albatrosses were the big ones, with lots of smaller shearwaters and a few Buller's albatrosses and others. They were so close that my 40-150 (80-300mm in 35mm-speak) telephoto lens was mostly too long and I ended up using the 14-54 standard zoom for half the photos.