The pictured birds are teals.
These very common dabbling ducks are no less lovely for being “common”.
Probably, this post’s heroines are grey teals, but they just might be chestnut teals, or hybrids.
Comments closedCategory: Western Australia
Our local lake never disappoints.
That said, bird-wise, the least interesting time is during Perth’s cooler, rainier months.
Then, migratory birds have all flown north – some of them, to far-off places in Eurasia.
Other birds spread out across southwestern WA; with water and food generally-available, they do not need to congregate around “permanent” bodies of water such as Lake Monger.
Still, as today’s & tomorrow’s posts illustrate, at Lake Monger there is always some avian activity to enjoy…
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Perth’s Kings Park is really three parks in one… plus “lookouts”.
The “lookouts” offer sweeping views from the rim of the scarp on Kings Park’s eastern and southern sides.
Looking east, they flatter the adjacent CBD, and look across the Swan Coastal Plain to the Darling Scarp.
Looking south, they show the full splendour of the Swan-Canning estuary, around which Perth’s wealthier suburbs sit.
If you walk (or catch a free bus) from the CBD – or West Perth – into Kings Park, the loveliness of its manicured, “picnic-friendly”, well-treed, grassed parkland is immediately obvious, as you can see in the featured image, above.
Every pleasant, sunny weekend, thousands of people take advantage of Kings Park’s generous supply of that kind of parkland.
However, what makes Kings Park so very special are its two other kinds of “park”: a superb botanical garden (which showcases WA’s extraordinary flora, conducts internationally significant research, and provides useful information to the general public) and its astonishingly expansive, essentially “natural” bush/woodland section.
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The moment I saw this exuberantly “bird-ready” example of Western Australia’s floral emblem, I suddenly remembered one of my favourite Australian poems.
Les Murray (1938 – 2019) never became a Nobel Laureate.
Depending on my mood, I find that fact “puzzling” (at his best, Murray was so very obviously – for much of his adult life – one of the greater 20th century poets) or “utterly predictable”. (his verse was so overtly Australian, and his views were not always “palatable”)
The Quality of Sprawl’s opening verse:
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
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Certain moments/circumstances – and/or an image which “captures” one of them, without seeking to “manipulate” it – have a “waking dream” quality.
That quality is hugely dependent on how the particular observer responds to the particular moment or image.
Certainly, however, a “waking dream” moment or image does not require the obvious presence of “conflict”, “high drama”, “hilarity”, “tragedy” or “somebody famous/infamous”.
To me, this post’s image captures a “waking dream” circumstance, but another pair of equally “perceptive” eyes could find “nothing special to see, here”.
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Q: Did s/he jump or was s/he pushed?
A: S/he jumped out of the relevant wave and onto one of Australia’s most beautiful, untamed beaches.
Q: Why, in fewer than four words?
A: Spooked by salmon….
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Above, is the most “heraldic” photo I have taken of a Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
She is the same individual as in #20, this post’s “moment” happened a fraction of a second earlier.
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Late afternoon, in a recently-burnt section of Shenton Bushland, a female Forest red-tailed black cockatoo spreads both wings and tail..
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From behind, as a female Forest red-tailed black cockatoo “lifts off” from a so-called “Cape Lilac” tree…
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“Routine maintenance”.
Our heroine is more spectacular than the “average” bird, but in this photo she is engaging in a necessary activity which all birds undertake.
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