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Tag: birds

No smugglers: (wild) Budgies

Published October 27, 2022 by Pelidoug

No smugglers: (wild) Budgies

 

 

Budgerigars, according to CSIRO Publishing’s The Australian Bird Guide, are always in flocks, sometimes of immense numbers.

That ain’t necessarily so, always!

On 18 October 2022, a whisker less than 200 kilometres north of Perth, we enjoyed an unexpected encounter with a pair of wild Budgerigars.

They were alone, together/ish.

The “/ish” is because they probably had offspring, safely invisible to us, nestled snugly within the tree hollow from which the female member of “our” pair only very occasionally and briefly emerged.

read moreNo smugglers: (wild) Budgies
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Birds, not bees: Wireless Hill, Spring 2022

Published September 12, 2022 by Pelidoug

Birds, not bees: Wireless Hill, Spring 2022

 

Unsurprisingly, southwestern Western Australia produces many different honeys, each deliciously distinct.

The most prized varieties are produced from rare, endemic species.

However, Western Australia’s southwest also has the world’s highest proportion of flowering plants that do not feed and/or seduce/deceive insect pollinators; these flowers (all, endemic species) favour birds.

(a few rely also/instead on particular, very small, also-endemic mammals)

WA’s floral emblem is bird-adapted.

read moreBirds, not bees: Wireless Hill, Spring 2022
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Khichan, Rajasthan: Jains and cranes (2 of 2: “social drinking”)

Published September 5, 2022 by Pelidoug

Khichan, Rajasthan: Jains and cranes (2 of 2: “social drinking”)

 

Imagine the image above, devoid of context, and subjected to a “caption this photo” contest.

A suitably cornball “winner”:
a quiet drink with a few mates.

The featured image was taken with a long lens (560 mm) at 11.12 am on 20 February 2020.

The photo immediately below was taken just a few seconds later, from almost exactly the same vantage point, overlooking a pond/reservoir, a few minutes away from Khichan…

read moreKhichan, Rajasthan: Jains and cranes (2 of 2: “social drinking”)
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Khichan, Rajasthan: Jains and cranes (1 of 2)

Published September 2, 2022 by Pelidoug

Khichan, Rajasthan: Jains and cranes (1 of 2)

 

Cranes: in this case, Demoiselle cranes, the world’s smallest crane species,

Jains: adherents of Jainism, an Indian religion which is older than Christianity and Islam.

The practical application of Jainism’s central principle/vow has produced an astounding result.

For Demoiselle cranes (and for human admirers of one of the world’s more elegant birds) Khichan –  a modest village in the Thar Desert – is now the world’s most rewarding destination.

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McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #9 in series (third of three “strangers in Paradise”)

Published August 17, 2022 by Pelidoug

McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #9 in series (third of three “strangers in Paradise”)

 

This kookaburra, perched on a grave cross, has something in common with most of the humans who have been buried in Perth’s largest cemetery over the past 123 years.

In 2022, most living WA humans do not know what it is; most of them, in fact, have a quite wrong view of kookaburras’ “place” in southwestern Australia.

read moreMcGowangrad, winter ‘22: #9 in series (third of three “strangers in Paradise”)
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Splendid by name…and in fact.

Published March 6, 2022 by Pelidoug

Splendid by name…and in fact.

 

 

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.

read moreSplendid by name…and in fact.
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Trapeze with feathers, sans safety net

Published February 22, 2022 by Pelidoug

Trapeze with feathers, sans safety net

 

 

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”.

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Feeding, Flaunting, Foaming, Forest-walking – Deep South WA

Published February 20, 2022 by Pelidoug

Feeding, Flaunting, Foaming, Forest-walking – Deep South WA

 

 

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.

read moreFeeding, Flaunting, Foaming, Forest-walking – Deep South WA
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