New Pics

What fascinates me about birds, other than how beautiful they often are & their unique characteristics, is that they remember places and come back. I find that phenomenal, that many of them travel such distances and yet they remember my backyard and return at around the same time each year. Some stay all the time but others like the Yellowtailed Black Cockatoos, the Wonga & Whiteheaded Pigeons and the Spangled Drongo keep coming back, I love that! One of the other things I've observed is that the 'ugly' birds like the Friarbird, Swamphen and Wattlebirds are the ones with the worst voices, the Swamphen can make a noise that's the bird equivalent of a horse snorting and an indignant squeal if disturbed. They do though have interesting colours, the Swamphen with the dark blue chest and the red beak and frontal shield and that cute little white undertail, the Wattlebird with its white and brown streaks and even the Friarbird has those long, pointed silver white feathers on it's breast, but it is a very unfortunate looking and sounding bird! The Bluefaced Honeyeaters spend most of their time finding food for fluffy babies with brown instead of blue faces who sit on branches endlessly making a 'whit whit' noise with the emphasis on the 'w'. That obviously means 'get me food now', like all good babies they are endlessly hungry. In watching the Little Pied Cormorant I'm amazed again how versatile it is, it can swim quite fast with just it's head above water and it's tail spread out behind on the surface of the water, it can suddenly dive under water and if startled rise out of the water and fly off. I've lived on the north coast for nearly twenty years now and never seen a Wallaby, I had no idea they were soooo cute and looked like something out to a children's fairy story. I'd also been thinking that I didn't ever see the raptors up close enough to photograph and then there they were, four Pacific Bazza Hawks who wheeled around and showed off for ages, and then the incredibly beautiful Blackshouldered Kite! It's a beautiful world! I saw the beautiful little Sacred Kingfisher again today in the same spot but today it had a mate, but as I was watching them a huge Sea Eagle came lazily over the cliff carrying a big piece of wood. It was so spectacular that by the time I'd thought to take a photo it had headed off to the swamp! New photos of the tiny Rainbow BeeEater today, they are the most spectacularly bright colours in green, orange, yellow and black and were darting about in a tree near an estuary! Wow that Little Pied Cormorant never ceases to amaze me, in the past couple of days I've seen it swimming with a Pelican and the next day it was sitting in the middle of a flock of Little Egrets, I wonder if it's really sociable or really lonely? Today down in the Tallows Wetlands, which is so changed because most of the water has been let out, I took these photos of the Royal Spoonbill but also the Striated Bittern, I'm pretty sure it's a Bittern rather than a Heron but it was so amazing as no-one else even saw it because it's so hidden against the sandy soil, incredible close up! Once again in September a small flock of Yellowtailed Black Cockatoos are back, wheeling around, hanging upside down in trees, going crook on each other and making that incredibly primal and mournful cry!

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