"The song of tui in the trees when one goes walking in Tawa is not at all uncommon, though not always quite so easy to spot them in thick foliage. Their sound is quite distinctive, not necessarily the most musical, but special nevertheless as they're a bird 'peculiar' to New Zealand - and more frequent in Tawa than they were just a few years ago."

I couldn't have expressed it more eloquently myself. Well, that stands to reason because those are the precise words I used on a page on this site dating back to August last year, as seen here. As on that particular page, the tui shown above were photographed in suburban Tawa, but much more recently. A tui in a kowhai tree (as in the right-hand shot) is a uniquely New Zealand scene.

- Malcolm Sparrow