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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andrew Whitehouse" data-source="post: 1378165" data-attributes="member: 3550">Day Eighteen: December 10th, MuriwaiAs mentioned at the beginning of the thread this was, and some of you will laugh at this, a 'work trip'.  So for most of the final week I was in Auckland at a conference.  Handily a few excursions had been organised for the Wednesday afternoon and one of these visited the Australasian Gannet colony at Muriwai, just a short distance west of Auckland.After enjoying a brisk wine-tasting at a vineyard, we tottered our way over to Muriwai, where it's possible to get great views of the colony.  It's not huge but there must be quite a few hundred pairs, either on the mainland or on the offshore stacks.  There were numerous young birds of varying sizes.  Also in the area I had good views of a Sacred Kingfisher and there were quite a lot of Tui and Silvereyes.  The beach at Muriwai is nice for paddling in.I didn't do much birding around Auckland during the week but Tui seemed fairly common around the city and I sometimes heard Grey Warblers too.  Common Mynas were very numerous.1. The offshore colony2-4. Some Gannets of an Australasian persuasion5. Sacred Kingfisher</blockquote>