Mr Hoot

Tuesday 5th May.  ‘Twas a lovely day and so I decided to go a little further afield to do some birdwatching.  I headed for the Whipstick Forest about 20kms away from home.  The GPS didn’t help at all and in fact got me misplaced (note: not lost).  Just as I was going to give up and go home I spied a sign pointing to Bridgewater - 28 kms it said.  That’s not far I said to myself, so I headed onwards.
Bridgewater on Loddon (to give its full name) was nothing special.  The riverside parkland was quite nice but they were doing some beautification work and access was a bit restricted.  So after a few quick photos, I decided to head off in the direction of Inglewood.  It wasn’t far and I found a lovely little town with old historic buildings.  The main road was a little surprising as it was quite narrow unlike most of the other towns with their wide town centre streets.  Inglewood’s local Historical Society had been busy with blue plaques on all the old buildings, describing their stories and all about the Great Fire of Inglewood on December 3rd, 1862.  It is a sleepy little town with 2 pubs and an air of better days.  There were quite a few ramshackle shops waiting to either be leased or fall down.

From Inglewood I went on towards a place I remembered I had been before a long time ago - Melville Caves.  I drove onwards towards Kooyoora State Park where the caves are supposed to be.  There weren’t a lot of signs around and I decided that I would head for home if I didn’t find any sign of it in the next 10 minutes.  5 minutes later I found a sign and in another 5 minutes I was at the caves.
Let me say from the start, they’re not really caves; just crevices between large rounded rocks. This didn’t take away from the beauty of the area though. The land around is flat and the small ‘mountain’ where the caves are stands out prominently above the forest and fields surrounding it. I spent a lovely half an hour wandering around in the sunshine photographing the boulders. I would recommend a visit here, it’s lovely.

Then homeward along country roads stopping to take photos of a Shingleback Lizard by the side of the road.  A great day just rambling around. More photos and information about Melville Caves on Flickr

Today I became the proud owner of a shiny new set of books called the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds or HANZAB for short.  It has long been a dream of mine to own the 7 volume set.  There are actually 9 books in the set because 2 of the volumes are divided into 2 parts.  I feel like I should be wearing cotton gloves whenever I open one of them!

HANZAB is the definitive work on birds of the Australasian region.  There are 9000 pages describing 952 species which is approximately 10% of all the world’s birds.  The books are now out of print and will not be re-printed, so it was lucky that I ordered them just before that announcement was made.  As it was, the bookseller reduced the price to a lower price AFTER I had ordered them and followed up with an email reducing the price for me too.

I like Auto-focus.  It works very well most of the time.  Except today it was a complete and utter failure.  The subject was a bird (what else) called a Clamorous Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus stentoreus) and as you can imagine, they live in reeds.  They are very vocal little birds but very hard to see, especially when they are in a thick bed of reeds.  My camera didn’t like those reeds.  The focus went crazy.  So I flipped my switch to manual and actually got a reasonable photograph.
It’s funny how much you rely on automation when you probably most often don’t need to.  You can see what I mean in the following photo.

For a couple of months now a bird has been calling from the bush at the back of our house.  For a while I had no idea what it was, all I had seen was a tiny bird high up in the tree tops.  Last week I had a suspicion that I knew what it was but couldn’t confirm it without a sighting.
Then today I had a short walk in the forest to take a photo for my 365 day project and when I returned there was a tiny bird on the birdbath.  By the time I had realised it was there it had flown up into the trees.  I managed to glimpse a flash of yellow and then luckily got a reasonable clear shot with the camera.  My suspicions were confirmed when I checked my field guides; it was a Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus).  They are extremely small and very pretty birds.

Yesterday another ‘lifer’ was added to my birdlist.  A juvenile Red-capped Robin (Petroica goodenovii) visited us, sitting just about a metre outside the back garden fence.  Again not a rare bird but one to add to my list.  Was a cute little thing too.

For the last couple of days a Common (feral) Pigeon (Columbia livia) has been coming to our garden.  Not too much unusual about that.  Trouble is that he is on his own and feeling, how can I say this - somewhat frisky.  With no one of his own kind around, he has been bowing and cooing to the Crested Pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes) and the Common Bronzewings (Phaps chalcoptera). Of course neither of these other two species will have anything to do with him.

But he still keeps on trying…

Back in February 2006, I started a group on Flickr called ‘Australian Birds‘.  There was no group already running that seemed to cater for this subject.  I didn’t really expect much from the group at that time.
Now, this weekend, the group has 1,000 members and nearly 19,000 photos.  I am very happy the way things have gone.  Only very occasionally have I had to delete a photo, and that was only because someone had put one on by mistake. I did have to limit the number of photos per day a little while ago to stop members flooding the group with dozens of pics.

Yesterday saw me begin Project 365.  This is a project to take a photo each day for a year.  The pictures are uploaded to Flickr every day (hopefully).
I have been threatening to do this project for a while and now I have finally begun. Cheers to everyone for their encouragement (and nagging) to get this off the ground.  Bets are being made as to the number of bird shots that I upload!
The photoset can be found here on Flickr.

On Friday 17th October 2008, I saw my first White-winger Triller (Lalage tricolor). It was a male calling and feeding in a eucalypt just past dam number 2 (the two dams numbered by me for reference). I took a few photos for identification purposes, none of them very good but enough to make a positive ID. A very exciting first sighting for me.

We have finally got the internet on here in our country home.  We have settled in and are loving the country life.  Everything is peaceful; the forest out the back is a never-ending source of delight.  Just watching the trees is entertainment in itself - the changes of light and shade on the foliage and trunks of the gums is beautiful.
Life is slower here, people don’t walk so fast as in the city, no rushing hither and thither.  When we see more than four cars at an intersection we think it’s a traffic jam!  People smile and say “g’day” and most of the staff in cafés and shops are friendly and helpful.
I am enjoying retirement. I go for walks in the forest or around the town taking photographs. I also do the housework and cook dinner for MrsHoot who’s at work Monday - Friday. And now that I have the internet back, I can really get stuck into my ornithological studies.

We love Bendigo!