Saturday, 16 June 2012

Galloping Galahs

After the activities of last week a quiet weekend is called for - plus its the winter holidays end of next week so no great rush to do anything if I'm honest.
Today in between domestic chores I took the children to Knuckey (Tish is a work this weekend) - well we have to do something that I want to do as well.
Yet again rather frustratingly the two birds that I want to photo (Pied Heron and Royal Spoonbill) were present in good numbers with over 20 of each but they were mostly feeding behind a line of low scrub and bushes and were only visible when they flew - very annoying but eventually my patience will be rewarded.
That said I did manage to get a decent photo of Little Pied Cormorant -another common bird that I have got poor pictures of in the past but today managed to get a couple of really good shots:



The real stars of the show though were the Galahs.
My typical view and photo of them at Knuckey is like this:

...distant and feeding on the ground.
Today though was my lucky day and a small group came onto a fence close by. They are real characters and having watched them for a while you can understand the appeal of keeping parrots (not that I would or indeed advocate doing so). This particular individual appeared to be quite shy at first


and was coyly looking away from the bird closest to him. He (or she) then got playful and started to swing on the wire! Unfortunately as my camera is quite old and is very slow so instead of getting a sequence of the bird swinging I only got this one as it started to pull its tail up and drop back..

What birds!

4 comments:

  1. Gorgeous birds! How small is small with the cormorant?

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    1. The cormorants are about shag sized so not that small just small than great cormorant that you get in both the UK and OZ

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  2. ooh, i love galahs.... though they were a by-word for daft - "you steamin' great galah!" was a general term of derision when we were out there!

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    1. It still is - but have to say I think it is unfair as they are great birds with tons of character! A a rule they tend to be quite shy and it has been hard to get a decent photo.

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