Went for a walk today around the Christchurch Botanic Gardens with my mate Greg and my annoying companion, incompetence. He always seems to show up when I’m taking pictures!

It’s amazing how close you can get to the birds there, I guess because they are so used to humans wandering bye. We spoke to one of the Botanic gardens staff and he pointed out a Kowhai tree that was in flower, commenting that there was always a bellbird hanging around feeding on the flowers. Sure enough, when we wandered over, there it was, having a great time amongst the flowers. I don’t think I have ever been so close to one before .. we were photographing it from about two metres away – and that’s when incompetence showed his ugly face. I couldn’t understand why my lens wouldn’t focus! After we had left the bird to its fun, I realised that I had accidentally knocked the focus limiter switch to 3m to infinity, instead of having it set to its full range! So many of the photos weren’t quite sharp. Sigh.

To be honest, from the way it was flittering about, it looked as though it had had too much nectar and was therefore a little bit drunk!