Call in at the Miranda Shorebird Centre and they'll point you in the right direction and give you an indication what birds are around.
Humans, on the other hand, are most commonly seen on summer afternoons circling and squawking outside Kaiaua Fisheries while they wait for a feed of fish and chips.
But, rather like the birds, they can also be found scattered along the coastline, often swimming, walking, catching fish or just enjoying the views of the sea and the tidal flats framed by the bush-clad hills of the Hunua range and the Coromandel Peninsula.
Some of their most popular roosting spots are:
* The Bay View Hotel, next-door to the fish and chip shop - a pleasant watering hole with a great beer garden in summer.
* The Dragon's Nest Pottery in Waharau - home of some delightful dragons with sinuous necks and sly smiles.
* Mangatangi Dam, the largest earth dam in the Southern Hemisphere - a beautiful spot for a picnic (although you'll need a permit to fish for its trout).
* Tapapakanga and Waharau Regional Parks - great places for bush walking, swimming, fishing and camping, and the Maori carving at the entrance to Tapapakanga is well worth a special look.
* Miranda Hot Springs - a huge hot pool, with an associated holiday park, which is particularly nice to visit at this time of year.
* The old Country Store in Waitakaruru (I've always liked the feel of Waitakaruru on the tongue: it means stagnant water or, more literally, water into which a morepork fell) - a magnificent collection of Kiwiana where you can easily spend an hour or so checking out everything from vinyl records to rusty saws and from kauri furniture to Staffordshire pottery.
And there are plenty of places besides the fish and chip shop where you can gather seafood.
Pacific oysters grow naturally on much of the coast or you can nip into Clevedon Oysters, just north of Kawakawa Bay, and buy a pot of fat commercially grown oysters.
At the Kaiaua gravel pits, part of a quarry run by Stevensons, you'll often see coarse fishing enthusiasts - it's the fish that are coarse, not necessarily the anglers - lined up in pursuit of koi carp, tench, rudd and quite large perch (though you need a permit if you want to join them).
Anglers who prefer something edible tend to hang around Matingarahi, where you can launch boats off the shingle, or the Kaiaua Boating Club, which has a ramp and a mini-marina just opposite the hotel.
Most of the migrating humans seem to flock home in the evenings, but for anyone wanting to stay a good choice is the Kaiaua Seaside Lodge run by Fran Joseph and Denis Martinovich.
The lodge is in a beautiful spot running down to the sea and Denis is eager for any excuse to get his lovely old Fergie tractor out and launch his boat off the end of the section to go fishing.
For an evening meal you can't do better than the restaurant attached to the fish and chip shop (the pan-fried lemon pepper snapper is unbelievable).
But the speciality of the lodge is an early-morning fishing trip to catch breakfast.
The bang on the door in pitch darkness is not necessarily welcome, nor is the wait in icy water holding the boat if the tractor proves temperamental. But when the sun comes up over the Coromandel and the snapper start biting, it's a magical world.
And afterwards, well, bacon and eggs are all very nice, but I can assure you there's nothing better than Fran's snapper, cooked about 15 minutes after it was caught.
* Jim Eagles paid his own way to Kaiaua and liked the place so much he bought a bach there.
Getting there Several routes take you to the Seabird Coast, but my favourite from Auckland is: zip south down the motorway and take the road to Tauranga; follow that until the turnoff to Thames and keep going until you hit Waitakaruru; turn north and take the coast road through Miranda, Kaiaua and Kawakawa Bay to Clevedon; then head for Manurewa or Papakura and you're back on the motorway after a pleasant drive through bush, coast and farmland.
Case notes
Things to do
