Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Unlike Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” – a deservedly celebrated, but much-misunderstood song – this post is 100% free of irony and angst.
The photo (copyright Doug Spencer) was taken at 1.54 pm on 15 March 2021.
The inlet’s shore is surely one of the more sublime picnic lunch spots, anywhere, and the inlet is just part of one of our favourite wild places.
Comments closed
Lustful, too!
East of the Nullarbor Plain, when an Australian talks of “blue wrens”, chances are they are Superb Fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus.
Superb Fairy-wrens do not exist on the WA side of the Nullarbor.
There – at least in WA’s southern half – the (equally superb) blue wren in question is usually the Splendid Fairy-wren, Malurus splendens.
Comments closed
Anyone who pays close attention to small birds surely cannot fail to marvel at their hyperactivity, their agility, and how radically and swiftly their appearance changes.
From one nanosecond to the next, the very same individual can appear remarkably different in shape, colour, size…and attitude.
All photos feature New Holland Honeyeaters attending the very same Grevillea, adjacent to the eastern wall of a house in Walpole, in Western Australia’s “Deep South”.
4 Comments
This post is a teaser: each subject of its four photographs will soon be explored further, in its own particular post.
All photos copyright Doug Spencer, taken in February 2022.
The first two images were both taken just a few steps outside of the house in which we stayed in Walpole.
Above, feeding, (& probably pollinating the Grevillea) is a New Holland Honeyeater Phylidonyris novaehollandiae.
Immediately below, flaunting, is a male Splendid Fairy-wren Malurus splendens.
One Comment
“I think you’ll be amused by its impertinence”.
Comments closed
Australia has six black cockatoo species.
All are intelligent, sociable, spectacularly agile, and have very powerful beaks.
The world’s only two white-tailed black cockatoo species – both endangered – are endemic to southwest Western Australia.
My beloved and I are lucky enough to see and hear one of them – Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo – on hundreds of occasions, every year.
The featured image shows behaviour which is very familiar to us.
The other photos show something “new”, at least to us.
Comments closed
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all…
So begins a justly celebrated poem by Emily Dickinson.
In this post “hope” is viewed through photographic, musical and poetic “lenses”.
Comments closed
(Sequel to immediately-preceding post. If you are new to Pelican Yoga, please see/read that post before you explore this one)
This post’s cockatoos were not playing “Banksia rugby”, but they were members of the same flock, and also part of our “late arvo Carnabys Encounter” on 15 September 2021, just outside Cape Arid National Park’s northwestern edge.
Comments closed
Imagine a spectacularly athletic, aerial form of rugby, played by members of an endangered cockatoo species…
This post will also lead you to a superb, long-awaited book by an Australian whose bird photography is in an entirely different league to yours truly’s.
Comments closed
The wing’s shape is such that it can push effectively against the air, and also generate lift as it moves forwards, but that is no use without a very powerful downstroke to capture the air in the first place, and this is where muscular strength comes in.
Comments closed
