A collection of photos from a windy day watching the Muriwai Gannet colony.

I absolutely adore getting to watch the gannets at Muriwai. The cliff residents spend the warmer months, from September through to April on the cliffs. As one of three mainland gannet colonies in New Zealand, how lucky are we to have the colony so close?

I don’t know what it is about the birds, perhaps the chaos, perhaps the harmony, the noise, the wind, the wild, but it’s captivating to watch. I could sit for hours just watching them do their thing.

Here’s a collection of stills from my springtime visit to the colony. It’s almost impossible to capture the beauty and chaos and harmony of the birds in still images, but ugh, the birds are beautiful and majestical.