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

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.

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.

Imagine my surprise…  This photo was judged ‘Photo of the Day’ for 28th October 2007 in the ‘Karma’ Group on Flickr.

Taken on my 2007 trip to Tassie, I cropped it a bit, changed it to black and white and upped the contrast.  I didn’t really take too much time or put much effort into the taking or the post-production.  Yet there it is as Photo of the Day.  You just never know what’s going to attract peoples attention.

Sunday 14th October saw our traditional 2nd Sunday in the month photo walk (I’m sure that doing something more than once constitutes a tradition). It was Michael‘s turn to choose the location and he chose the suburban streets, lanes and alleys of Collingwood and Fitzroy. Michael, Richard and I all used our ‘nifty 50′ lenses and Chris used an 17-40mm L series lens that he stole borrowed from a friend. I am still impressed by the sharpness and quality of the ‘fantastic plastic’ lens – marvelous for the price!

Michael conducted a bit of a Scavenger Hunt – we pulled subjects from a plastic bag; I got ‘framing’, ‘black’ and ’4 in a row’. The suburban environment was a challenge for me and although I was forbidden to take any pictures of birds, I managed to sneak a few in.

After a gourmet lunch at a convenient Macca’s, we returned to Michael’s house. Richard had to leave for a BBQ so Michael, Chris and I took a stroll down to the local duckpond where I could slap on my 70-300mm zoom and take ornithological pics to my heart’s content.

We also had a try at ’10 photos’; this is where one of us would choose a subject and we’d have to take 10 shots of it. We did a dead tree, a park bench and a power pylon. It certainly makes you think when you have to do that kind of thing. Was a lovely day!

Funny how you read something and you immediately form an opinion even though you know nothing about the actual facts of the case.

Take Sir Paul McCartney for instance. At the moment he is appearing at the High Court in London trying to reach a divorce settlement with Heather Mills, the ex Lady McCartney. Although I have done no research at all, I am sure that it’s all her fault. After all Paul was a Beatle and I am following the press tenet that I shouldn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Back to the point. I read an article about the divorce and straight away I thought of a photo I took at the zoo the other day.

“Lady McCartney, who had arrived in the morning with a blanket over her head, shielded her face as she left later.”

Perhaps I am just weird…