Wheelspinner's Birds

[wheelspinner]

While I doubt I can match Bob's skills, I thought you might like to look at some of my bird photos. I'll start with some I took recently, and add to this thread as I go.

[wheelspinner]

Here's a couple I took last weekend at the Hamilton Botanical Gardens. I had to shoot through chicken wire, and I thought these came out all right, given that.

An emu



A Golden Pheasant

[Georgina]

I love the emu head! What a funny-looking creature that is.

The colours on the pheasant are amazing.

[wheelspinner]

Dec 24, 2009 1:09:57 GMT -5 Georgina said:

I love the emu head! What a funny-looking creature that is.

The colours on the pheasant are amazing.

I was a bit nervous about that emu shot. They can get aggro, and that beak can make an awful mess of you. Even with chicken wire in place, it's not safe to get too close. This was just about as close I felt comfortable with.

[Deleted]

That emu pic is cool. A possible title for it:

I'm ready for my close up now Mr. DeMille.

[wheelspinner]

Here's a grey butcherbird that just lit on our back fence on the weekend.

[MacBeth]

He's beautiful !!!

[wheelspinner]

This is a common bird around here that we call a mudlark. Also known as a magpie lark, and a peewee (in NSW).

[Georgina]

He's lovely. And that's a great shot, WS.

It's funny how local birds that we see every day and take for granted can be so impressive to other people. We have magpies around here and anyone visiting from other parts of Canada never fail to be impressed with them. They resemble a crow but with a blue hue to the black feathers and they have a swatch of robin's egg blue and white on their wings. Local people consider them pests.

Not that that has anything to do with your bird, the magpie name caused me to blather all of that.

[wheelspinner]

Your magpies sound very pretty.

We get two kinds - white-backed and blacked-back. Mostly white-backed.

Magpies here are terrific songbirds; their morning trilling is one of the classic sounds of the Australian bush.

[wheelspinner]

Here's some photos I took up by the river over Easter. More to come.

A noisy miner



A mudlark in flight



Two kookaburras, one laughing, the other busy with a mouse

[Georgina]

All excellent shots, WS. That's quite a catch (I'm assuming) to photograph one mid-meal. The shot of your noisy miner is really impressive for clarity and detail. Did you get something new in the way of camera stuff?

[wheelspinner]

Same gear - I was using a 300mm zoom lens. Noisy miners are pretty confident birds, and this guy came up pretty close to me.

[wheelspinner]

More birdies, all taken in the State Forest over the road from my MIL's house.

An Eastern Rosella



A Black-backed Magpie



A Jacky Winter



A pair of Bluebonnets



Another Bluebonnet. This one gives you a better idea of where he gets his name - the blue patch above his beak.

[wheelspinner]

This photo is a little dodgy, but this fella was a long way away, and really well camouflaged in the mallee scrub. It's a spiny-cheeked honeyeater.

[Georgina]

His camouflage is very effective. You have quite a cornucopia in your yard (very broad use of the word 'yard' there) WS.