It’s summer in December again! We have escaped from Britain during an interval in the unaccustomed snow and freezing temperatures, and now bask in the sunshine on the other side of the world – in Dunedin, New Zealand.

As soon as was decently possible, I drove out to the hills of the Otago Peninsula, which separates Dunedin’s long, dog-legged harbour, set in the remains of an ancient volcano, from the Pacific Ocean. The winding road along the top was just the same as I remembered it, showing vertiginous drops down to sandy beaches edging the ocean on one side, and winding across to spectacular views of Otago Harbour on the other.

As I turned off the ridge road onto the dirt track which dropped down to skirt huge shallow inlets filled with seawater and silt, I wondered how the wildlife had fared in the three years since my last visit. Driving around Hooper’s Inlet, I asked myself whether there would be any spoonbills around the next corner. Yes, there was! Half a dozen were striding through the shallow water, swishing their bills from side to side, white feathers ruffled by the wind and gleaming in the sun as they filtered the water for sustenance.  After a few more bends around the edge of the inlet, would there be a kingfisher on the power lines? Yes, there he was, scanning for insects the sparse vegetation which encroached on the silt at this point. Was he the same one that occupied this territory three years ago, or one of his children?

No matter, all was as it should be. Paradise shelducks grazed the meadows, harriers quartered the sides of the hills and the dune flats, black-winged stilts and spurred plovers patrolled the water’s edge and further out were the ducks, black swans and the occasional white-faced heron.

I made my way to a beach where I had watched blue penguins come out of the sea in the half light after sunset. These little penguins had some human friends who had provided them with nestboxes, and I wanted to see if they were still there.

Sure enough, there were the nestboxes, with little penguin footprints all around, and the inevitable trap with poison bait to protect them from predators. I wondered who provided the nestboxes for this little colony, and whether they felt that the penguins were thriving – there were about the same number of nestboxes as there had been three years ago.

I was thinking about things like this as I made my way back, walking along the sand beside the rocky cliff. Suddenly, a rock beside me lunged upwards with a loud “Grarrrff!!” and changed into a fur seal, considerably upset by my unintended close approach – to about a metre! Grateful that I had not been punished for my carelessness, I took his photograph as he regarded me reproachfully, and continued on my way.