Many bird
photos are taken that don’t make it into my blog posts. These accumulate and
during periods when I am unable to get out into the field or my efforts do not
turn up photo situations that warrant a post on a specific subject or location,
then I am tempted to do a post containing a selection of miscellaneous photos. Now
is such a time. The photos in this post have accumulated since early January
2016. The captions provide brief comments on the subjects.
Enjoy.
Please click on photos
to enlarge.
It is
quieter in the bush now the breeding season is over.
|
Superb
Fairy-wren male (14/03/16) Picnic Point Bairnsdale - moulting back to brown non
breeding winter plumage. |
It is also now
quieter in the bush because many of our summer migrant bush birds have headed
north and the calls associated with their southern breeding season have long
ceased.
|
Male
Rufous Whistler (22/02/16) Fairy Dell Flora Reserve – one of our now departed summer
migrant bush birds. |
|
Male
Gang-gang Cockatoo (8/01/16) Colquhoun Regional Park near Lakes Entrance. |
I am sure I
share a soft spot for this species with many bird lovers. They are more or less
resident in our area, though also somewhat nomadic. Some are altitudinal
migrants heading up into the alpine country for summer.
|
Is he
sizing me up? |
|
Southern Boobook Owl (13/01/16) |
This is an
adult bird flushed at the Oneonta Reserve, Lake Tyers Beach. There were two
adults and two young just able to fly – clearly the young were raised on the
reserve which has some old hollow bearing eucalypts. The rest of the family stayed
well concealed in dense cover, so no photos.
|
Close
up of those wonderful night adapted eyes and the soft breast plumage. |
|
Red-necked Avocet (25/02/16) – photo of a small group out of several hundred
birds on Jones Bay, Gippsland Lakes. |
Large
numbers of this species take refuge on the Gippsland Lakes during prolonged
inland droughts – we have recorded over 1,300 in one flock on Jones Bay.
|
Black-tailed Godwits (25/02/16) (4 on right) and Bar-tailed Godwits (2 on left)
on Jones Bay. Black-tails are uncommon in our area. |
It is now
mid April and many of our migrant shorebirds are currently departing for the
northern hemisphere breeding season – adding to the general scarcity of birds
and the challenge to find birds to photograph and blog posts to publish.
|
Three
Black-tailed Godwits from the group above. Note their bills are straight
whereas the Bar-tails have slightly up-curving bills. |
|
Adult Australasian
Grebe (28/02/16) in breeding plumage. This photo was taken on the water storage
dam at Black Sallee Picnic area in alpine country off the Great Alpine Road between
Omeo and Dinner Plain Ski Village. |
|
Two of
the three young belonging to the adult bird above. |
|
Adult
White-winged Chough – Omeo (29/02/16 – we got an extra days birding this year) |
|
Choughs - being ground feeders - can be scruffy at times however the young are particularly
unkempt. |
|
Female
Flame Robin (1/03/16) |
While the
females are often considered drab by comparison with the brightly coloured
males, I liked the light in this photo
and the bokeh (see Note 1)
taken at Bentley Plain in alpine country
on the Nunniong Plateau east of Swifts Creek.
|
Nankeen Kestrel at Mt Hotham Airport (2/03/16) – back light highlights the
fanned tail which is missing one feather. The alulas are showing clearly – see Note 2
below. |
|
Juvenile Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike on a fence (26/03/16) Forge Creek Water
Reserve Eagle Point. |
|
Pair
of adult Wedge-tailed Eagles (26/03/16) perched in a tree at the Forge Creek
Water Reserve near Eagle Point. There is a good chance this pair are the ones
using a huge nest about 2 kilometres from where this photo was taken. |
|
The
pair took off and circled around to gain height before departing the area. |
|
The
wedge tail is very evident in both photos. |
|
Crested Shrike-tit, Organ Pipes National Park north of Melbourne (8/04/16).
|
Note1:
Copied from Wikipedia
In
photography,
bokeh (Originally
,
[1] BOH-kay — also sometimes pronounced as
BOH-kə,
[2] Japanese: [boke]) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens.
[3][4][5] Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".
[6] Differences in
lens aberrations and
aperture shape cause some
lens
designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while
others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—"good" and
"bad" bokeh, respectively.
[7] Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the
depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a
shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.
Note 2:
Copied from Wikepedia
The alula, or bastard wing, (plural alulae)
is a small projection on the anterior edge of the wing
of modern birds and a few non-avian dinosaurs.
The word is Latin and means "winglet"; it is the diminutive of ala, meaning
"wing". The alula is the freely moving first digit, a bird's
"thumb," and typically bears three to five small flight feathers, with the exact number depending
on the species.