No visit to Auckland is complete without a trip out to the West Coast to see the gannet colony at Muriwai, so with our UK visitor nearing the end of her trip, this was our destination for the day,
It really is an awe-inspiring sight to witness around 1,200 pairs of gannets nesting on the rocks, and watch the the young chicks plucking up the courage to leap from the rocks and take their very first flight.
We visited in February, towards the end of the nesting season, with the rocks starting to thin out as the juvenile birds and their parents make their way across the Tasman sea to the warmer winter climate of Australia.
