This Nadia Lim recipe for Microwave scrambled eggs was easy and delicious. Easier than cooking eggs on the stovetop and cleaning up afterwards.

They don’t have the exact same consistency of scrambled eggs cooked in a pan, but they’re pretty good nonetheless.

Several flights of Kuaka | Godwits flew north while I was hanging out at the Dune Lake. One lot flew right over me, and so low I could hear the whirring of their wings. It was magical. 🐦

Photos from a different group.

A flock of birds bunched up as they fly.
Close up of a bunched up group of kuaka.

Paradise Ducks would be a great alarm system — they spot you from miles away and don't stop squawking till you leave.

These were down at the river mouth yesterday. 🐦

This interesting display seems to be permanent outside one house on Marsden Point Road.

Several figures, including Minions, stand or sit before a hedge on the side of the road.

While waiting for moonrise last night I looked west and saw the last signs of a setting sun.

A darkened landscape with backlit billowy clouds and rays of sunshine escaping behind.

Note: I uses the magic eraser tool in Photos to remove power lines.

A major new report … Our Marine Environment 2025 from the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ [found] that New Zealand's oceans are warming faster than the global average, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense, the risk of invasive species and marine disease is increasing with climate change, and wetlands, dunes and native vegetation are being degraded.

… 91 percent of New Zealand's seabirds and 35 percent of its marine mammals were threatened or at risk

Via: $180 billion of homes sitting on flood-prone land, government report finds | RNZ News.

I drove 5 minutes to the beach to watch the Harvest Supermoon rising. I had to wait till it cleared the cloud. [Heh, it's spring in this part of the world, not harvest time.]

Fiery looking yellow moon with a halo of cloud, above a dark sea and with a mountain nearby.

For the Pacific Wave Appreciation Society. 🌊

When we moved in to our house one side of a sliding door was badly scratched. The glazier theorised that whoever had cleaned it had a tiny chip of concrete or similar trapped on the rag.

Now, several weeks later they replaced the glass and I was amazed at how quick the job was: 15 minutes all up.

Sliding door with one pane of double-glazing removed.

Today we drove south slightly to look at Langs Beach, about 3 Km south of Waipū Cove.

A stretch of golden sand seaward of grass, with hills in the background.

Then we drove a tad further to Mangawhai Heads and Mangawhai, all rather built up.

Panorama of a hillside looking over beach, sea and a sandspit.
The Mangawhai sandspit

The sandspit is home to the extremely endangered Tara iti | Fairy tern. 🐦

The relict population of fewer than a dozen pairs survives between Whangarei in the north and Auckland to the south. The tiny population is gravely threatened by introduced predators and disturbance or encroachment by humans. They are intensively managed during the breeding season.

Author D. L. Keur has several series I enjoy, and Toxic Deceit (The King & Midnight K-9 Mysteries Book 3) was no exception: 📚

When a young woman exhibiting signs of psychosis is killed, it seems like a drug-induced frenzy… Then, another woman dies after falling into a seizure-induced coma and, hours later, a family of four is admitted to the hospital, all of them showing signs of poisoning …

Book cover: Toxic Deceit.

Hmmm, this is the second time in a couple of weeks that my M1 MacBook Pro has thrown up this message after being asleep for a few hours. My 8Gb RAM is really starting to be a problem. The next one I buy (in a few months I hope) will have at least 16Gb.

Error message advising my system has run out of application memory.

This pukeko was hurrying by with a tasty morsel. 🐦

Brown bare earth with green grass behind. A pukeko at the edge of the two has a large item in its beak.

Magpie yodelled at me from the corner of the fence this morning. 🐦

Black and white magpie on the end of a wooden fence, with trees behind.

Unfortunately we don't see this view from our house. On the other hand, it's only a 2 minute walk up a small incline behind our house to reach this viewpoint.

A view across open ground and past shrubs to a mountain in the background. There is blue sky with puffy clouds.

This 7 minute video from MinuteFood explains why bread gets hard as it stales, thanks to retrogradation, while cookies / biscuits go soft. A good watch. The REAL reason bread goes stale.

Most of Knight Shadow (Jorja Knight Mystery Series Book 8) by Alice Bienia was interesting and enjoyable. 📚

When her boss sends her to check on an old army buddy displaced by a fire, Jorja leaps at the chance—only to find him dead in a downtown alley.

Several chapters at the end though, after things were more or less resolved, were confusing and felt like a rushed afterthought.

Book cover: Knight Shadow.

About 10 minutes drive from our house is Wilson’s Dam:

created as a water supply reservoir for [Ruakākā] and now regularly stocked by Fish and Game with both rainbow and brown trout.

I don't fish but visited to see if there were any birds around. There weren't really.

It was a gorgeous spot though and would be a wonderful place to take a book and a picnic and while away some time.

Scrub your boots on the way in, to help prevent the spread of diseases that harm kauri trees.

Kauri boot scrub station with brushes and disinfectant.
Grass beside a small part of the lake with hills covered in bush in the background.
A hill beside the lake covered in dense bush.

Māori were the first people to arrive and settle all over Aotearoa somewhere around the year 1200-ish.

Thank goodness people (usually) word their signage more carefully these days than this plaque from 1992:

A plaque on a brick wall reads: Erected by the descendants of
Thomas & Jane Prescott to mark the occasion of the 130th anniversary of this family's arrival in New Zealand, aboard The 'Queen Of The North on 30th June, 1862 First Settlers Of Ruakaka.

The museum wax I needed and was looking for yesterday for a project turned up today, of course. 😆

Meanwhile, I've discovered a photo I've been looking for for a while. Here, a photo of a very old photo — my maternal grandmother, age 84 when I visited her in London in 1976. I'd last seen her in 1963.

An elderly woman smiling at the camera while seated in an arm chair, with an old-fashioned mirror on the wall behind her head, a tall cactus and some photos on a table nearby.

Black swans and mallard ducks on the nearby Dune Lake. 🐦

Swans and ducks on a small lake with rushes behind..