Designer Tramping with the Birds

“In the style stakes, there is no contest between hikers and pied oystercatchers in Abel Tasman National Park,” Melanie Ball writes for The Australian’s Vogue Living section. “For while the former splash through low-tide shallows in dull hues and outrageous stripes, the latter epitomise panache in black and white as they pick molluscs from wet sand with lipstick-red beaks … On my final evening on the Abel Tasman Coast Track, I stroll solo along Torrent Bay’s sandy shore, leaving human footprints beside those of the oystercatchers.”