Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
At 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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In the title-song on her 1974 LP, Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell called Los Angeles city of the fallen angels.
In December 2023 “The Terrace” – the unusually long through street in the non-Scottish Perth’s CBD – has a lot of upstanding angels, along with banners that declare Christmas Lives Here.
Needless to say, their presence will be brief.
And – as you can see in the featured image – they are dwarfed by towers, named after the temporal powers that have prevailed here, year round, since the 1960s.
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The above photo and the one immediately below feature the same individual.
Unmistakably, the tail announces that this forest red-tailed black cockatoo is a male..
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On the afternoon of 26 August 2023 Shenton Bushland was already very colourful, although “peak Springtime flowering” was probably still a few weeks away.
None of this post’s flowers are hard to find at this time of year, providing you are in the right kind of place, within southwest Western Australia.
Shenton Bushland is one of several “right kinds of place” that are less than 20 minutes away from Perth’s CBD.
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The “donkey” is an orchid.
The “spider” is an actual spider, on the orchid.
The large orchid is impossible to miss.
However, to enjoy a good look at the tiny spider you should zoom in on/ enlarge the featured image… and then inspect the uppermost part of the donkey orchid.
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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.
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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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