Outdoors: Swept away on waves of love

By COLIN MOORE

All summer I have been watching love on the shorelines. The display begins at first light when the dog walkers and fitness joggers pad along the water's edge.

Among the walkers will be couples holding hands or a child persuaded to get out of bed and accompany a parent.

In the early morning the dogs relish the freedom of the beach. After 8 am they must be on a leash, but for now they sniff and snort and frolic with an unbounded affection for the shoreline.

At times the dogs' joy at being on the beach will test relationships with responsible owners, for other lovers of the sand are out and about too.

Three pairs of pied stilts, their fledglings flown the nest, eye the intruders from atop spindly red legs.

If the stilts feel threatened they quicken their jerky pace and perhaps take a low, swooping flight for a few dozen metres, their elegant undercarriage trailing behind. But whether patrolling the shoreline for breakfast or in flight, the pair are never more than a few centimetres apart.

A pair of variable oystercatchers tend to be less inseparable, searching for a tasty tua tua or sandworm and just occasionally checking on how the other is getting on. They are the only oyster catchers in the world with a plumage that varies from black to pied. In the winter they will likely join a flock and fly off to a more sheltered sand dune to nest concealed in shallow dune grasses, but for the moment they are just enjoying each other's company.

There doesn't appear to be much love lost between flocks of scavenging, squawking black-backed and red-billed gulls. But a lone dotterel pair, chicks long since gone, continues the defensive ritual of one bird scurrying off in a random direction to lead any enemies away from where its mate may be hiding.

As fascinating as these feathered lovebirds on the shoreline may be, it is inevitably human lovers who provide the most entertainment and joyful romance.

The joy is best seen later in January when breadwinners seem to have returned to their lathes and laptops and the beach is a happy playground for mothers and toddlers.

Perhaps it is the sound of the waves on the shoreline, but the babies always seem to sleep happily under the shade of an umbrella while mother snatches a brief moment to read in peace.

At night teenagers gather like moths to small beach fires - no protective dotterel parent in sight to lead anyone away - and make new friends with conversation and phrases that their generation has definitely invented.

If they "hook up", to use their parlance, you may see them join the hand-holding brigade on an evening stroll. And who knows where that may lead?

Perhaps because love and romance seems to flourish on the shoreline, beach resorts are increasingly popular for weddings.

Last year the daughter of our beach neighbour said "I do" on a remote island resort in Fiji.

And resorts such as the Rarotongan Beach Resort in the Cook Islands are making a specialty of hosting weddings and catering for wedding parties.

Our own shorelines are special places for lovers too. Andrea Griffiths' second home and special place has been at a Far North beach for all but a few weeks of her 30 years. So when Carl Jackson, an old school friend and regular visitor to the Griffiths' family bach at Taupo Bay, popped the question as the sun rose on the new millennium - see where those beach fires lead - where else to get married but on the sands on which they were sitting?

So this summer our shoreline was doubly blessed by love. And if the couple imagined that distance might dull the response to their invitations to share their special day at their special place, they were happily mistaken. Every rentable bed at the bay was taken.

As the bride made her way down to the beach other observers of love on the shorelines, guests and locals alike, lined her path strewn with rose petals.

While children played on boogie boards behind them, the couple said "we do" and then, in a touch possible only on the shoreline, the groom dug in the sand at his feet where his groomsmen had secreted a chilly bin full of cold beer and champagne.

We toasted the happy couple, and later glowed as they cut a wedding cake decorated in colourful shells of icing and danced under a marquee until it was almost time for the pairs of pied stilts to take their morning walk along the shoreline.

For once there weren't that many people out walking early. Love had taken its toll on too many heads.

* New Zealand: Land of Birds, Geoff Moon (New Holland, $59.95)

The Rarotongan beach resort

* colinmoore@xtra.co.nz