It’s not the best idea to start a year-long, daily photo project on a whim – oops! 🤷 I’ve been tossing up about starting one for a while and last week I came across the 365 Project website. I nwas really drawn to how encouraging and interactive the community seems to be, so I signed up. Apparently, day 1 is supposed to be the day you sign up, so here we are! I’m sharing my daily images to my Instagram stories (and sometimes my feed) as well.
I have been building a slow but steady fascination with native & endemic wildlife, especially the ones that visit my garden. Like most other New Zealanders, I grew up with a healthy knowledge of our unique native birds – tūī, korimako, pukeko, pīwakawaka, kiwi etc. – but I knew little to nothing about our other native fauna. Having a garden that I can spend time in on at least a weekly basis has been an amazing opportunity to observe the visitors beyond the more conspicuous birds (and neighbourhood cats).
And so it’s interesting that my first few images are endemic fauna. Day 1 was a korimako (bellbird) flying from a branch in our kōwhai tree, Day 2 is a dragonfly which I later found out is Procordulia grayi (yellow spotted dragonfly), and Day 3 is a kahukura (red admiral butterfly). And all in our garden – pretty exciting stuff!
Dwindle River Studio 