We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am.
Last week we had a larger group of hikers than usual and a sunny spring day with a cool wind. We drove just a short distance along the Airport Rd and parked on the roadside at the sandpit curve. Walking north past the Airport and then taking the logging road with the iron gate headed down through the trees to Cox Lagoon. The tide was coming in, but not yet high enough to prevent walking along the beach to the sandbanks. Often when we do this hike it's on a calm day so we can look out for the little Harbour Porpoise that seem to have adopted this short stretch of water as their favourite feeding area for the last few years. At first they were around only in the summer months, but now they are here all winter. We were sheltered from the wind on the beach at lunchtime and then it was the steep trail up the cliff and more logging roads through the forest and back to the sandpit by the Airport Road.
Black Brant Geese visit Gillies Bay beach between February and the end of April on their long migration along the Pacific coast to their nesting grounds in Alaska, and the northern coast of Canada. This year the numbers are a bit higher than usual, but I'm seeing fewer juveniles than I would expect to see. The three in my photo are all adults and the two with yellow leg bands are a male and female pair. Juveniles are similar in size and plumage to the adults, except for a few faint white lines on the wing feathers which they lose when they reach one year old.
JD.
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