I’ve now been in Australia for a few weeks and in amongst other sightseeing. I have had the chance to see so many new (to me) species of birds.
This is always a bit of thrill – putting new species onto the ever growing list of types of birds I have seen and then if I’m lucky also adding them to my list of birds I’ve successfully photographed.
Striated heron
There have been so many interesting birds that if I wrote something about each one then this wouldn’t be a blog, but something nearer a book.
However a few observations and themes
They see them very differently…
This is perhaps best exemplified by the Australian Ibis – something I have always thought of as an exotic water bird and some of my shots reflect this but over here they are most commonly known as 'bin-chickens' as they are very prevalent in urban areas, scavenging food and indeed stealing it from cafés and even people n the way some British seagulls do
Bin-chicken in a cafe
Colourful and/or exotic
Rather like the fish on the great barrier reef (if you have ever been lucky enough too go snorkelling there) the colours are fabulous; bold and bright. An obvious example is the Rainbow lorikeet which does in fact have most of the colours of the rainbow as part of their plumage – but birds with bright yellows, blues, greens, pinks are everywhere
Rainbow Lorikeets
Blue-faced honeyeater
Corella
And that proverbial ‘same but different’
These are the birds that sound the same but are different – like magpies. Australian magpie are black and white but the patterning is very different (and I’m still not sure I can always quickly distinguish them from Butcher birds.)
Australian Magpie
What I think are grey butcherbirds
There are Kookaburras and plenty of them in the ‘wild’…
and lots more besides
Pink legged Stilt
White faced Heron
Little Egret
Osprey (I think)
Masked Lapwing (Plover)
Noisy Miner Birds which are indeed noisy
More to follow...
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