Elder and Sister Saunders Mission : Eastwood Hill

Next we visited the Eastwood Hill Arboretum. We were told this has such pretty gardens but actually it was full of trees. Elder Saunders was not impressed and did not want to go inside but just for me he did. We (I) actually had lots of fun before we went inside. A bird welcomed us and came so close to us I even feed it some apple. I don’t know what kind of bird it is yet but when I get Wi-Fi next I will google it. I think its a male Chaffinch. That was a good start to our adventure. There were different coloured routes and we decided to take the yellow route which may have taken about 45 mins. When we were about half way around there was a bench so Elder Saunders sat for a while, while I went under some trees to find the Tuis. Boy was I in for a treat. I think it may be the mating season as they was a lots of different calls from them and most of them kept flying around in pairs. I took loads of photos and even videos. Again hopefully they are not too long for me to post on the blog and that you can watch them. After that we went for the second half of our walk, or at least that was what we thought. At one point we could not find any yellow markers and double backed on ourselves only to find that we had to go back in that direction again. We seriously did not know what to do and were quite annoyed. So we followed another trail not knowing if we were going away from the exit or not. It turned out as I thought, we were going away from the exit. Rather than turn back we had to go on another 45 minute trail. We were not happy bunnies when we finally found a yellow/purple/red exit trail. After another 15 mins walk we had finished our original 45 minute walk for a 2 hour hike!!!! I seriously did not want to go into the car absolutely hating this place so I suggested we sat down on the benches for a few minutes to calm down. Timely our welcoming committee returned and I was able to take a photo of our bird on the table. Just in case some of you experts want to comment on this we do know it was not the same bird. But it made for a good ending to our story.