Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
The featured image looks east, across Perth’s Elizabeth Quay, at 2. 49 pm on 24 April 2024.
Its official name – bestowed in 2012 by then WA Premier Colin Barnett – honoured the then British monarch.
The name came after the monumentally-expensive development’s first sod had been turned.
More than a few Perth residents prefer to call it “Betty’s Jetty.”
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Most Australian humans live in substantial cities.
Until late in the 20th century, ibis were not a “regular part of the urban scene”; urban humans who had seen ibis had usually seen them only when said humans “got out of town”.
Mid-20th century humans did not refer to Australian white ibis as “bin chickens – Threskiornis molucca was yet to “invade” our cities.
Back then, the ibis most familiar to Australians was Threskiornis spinicollis – the straw-necked ibis, aka “the farmer’s friend”.
All ibis pictured in this post are of the farmer-friendly kind, but photographed well within a metropolis.
Many (most, I suspect) city-resident humans who encounter these ibis wrongly assume that they are yet more “bin chickens”.
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This little series concludes a few minutes after sundown, looking at some “premium real estate” on the western side of inner-urban Perth’s Lake Monger.
I think the new overnight-roosters have supplanted the immediately-preceding “tenants”: respectively, ibis and corellas.
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This post’s photo was taken only a few seconds after the previous post’s.
As you can see, the “bin chickens” were not the only birds then coming in to roost at Lake Monger.
In recent months corellas have absolutely ravaged previously well-grassed parts of the Lake’s southern shoreline.
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This post’s photo was taken just after sunset, less than two minutes after the previous post’s.
If I had pointed my camera at the pictured branches a few minutes earlier, they would have been “empty”, and most of the pictured birds would not yet even have flown into our field of view.
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There is a deal of grace here, too!
Ibis are among more than a few birds which appear “awkward” when on terra firma – or on slushier ground, or enjoying the local tip, sitting atop your roof, or “dealing with” a rubbish bin – but are decidedly elegant, aloft.
Comments closedAt 6.20 pm on the last day of March 2024 we were standing beside the western shore of Lake Monger.
The setting sun had just “disappeared”, now hidden by the low slope behind us.
However, in the sky above us, the last of that day’s direct sunbeams were able to reach the underside of the pictured ibis.
It was just beginning its descent.
A few seconds later it joined a rapidly-growing number of roosting “bin chickens”, settling in for the night.
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The very same bird can “look” very different, depending on the observer’s knowledge/ignorance, that observer’s particular preconceptions/prejudices, and the bird’s current activity/stance/position.
And if one is photographing a bird that is both much-loved and widely-loathed, it is easy for a photographer to pander to – or to defy – “negative” or “positive” preconceptions about it.
This little series features one such species.
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If you browse the internet, looking for “mulla mulla”, you soon realise that many Australians mistakenly think that Ptilotus exaltatus is the only such species.
Ptilotus exaltatus – commonly known as “pink mulla mulla” – is likely the best-known; it is notably tall/large, and has probably the widest range, naturally occurring in “poor” soil in not-very-wet places, across much of the Australian continent.
It is, however, far from the only kind of mulla mulla.
Ptilotus exaltatus is not even the only kind of pink mulla mulla.
This post’s pink-tipped hero – Ptilotus manglesii – is more petite, and its blooms are usually ground-huggers.
Arguably, Ptilotus manglesii is even more beautiful than its “exalted” cousin.
Its natural range is within WA’s southwest, only.
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Thysanotus is a genus within the asparagus family.
All but one of its 50 known species are native to Australia.
45 of them occur in Western Australia alone, and most of those exist only in particular parts of WA’s southwest.
They are generally known as “fringe lilies”
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