Leap year special backyard portraits

This post is devoted to the scaly-breasted lorikeet. It has been a real treat to be obersving more of these around our garden in the last 6 months or so - long may it continue. While they bring out the most feisty behaviour of the rainbow lorikeets, this particular day, they had the spaces to themselves and that allowed for a more calm presence. This offered a great opportunity for some nice portrait moments ... I hope you enjoy ... 😁

While the scaly-breasted lorikeets have become more frequent visitors, the white-headed pigeon is not so frequent in our yard. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the first one I have photgraphed other than on electricity lines out the front in any proximity to our place. So presenting itself on our front birdbath was a real treat. Nice to get such close portraits and capture subtle shifts in posture and sight - the contrast of various reds and pinks against the white and grey, and even the variants of grey in the soft light is a treat.

It's a leap year!

Appropriately the first posts catching up after our return from Tassie and into the new year of 2024 are presented on 29 February 😊. I shall add another two posts on this once in four year day so I can be "caught up".

In this first up post are some shots from around our garden again featuring the way a range of birds are opportunistic feeders and willing to share, provided a pecking order is observed! The first series of photos below show scaly-breasted lorikeets, rainbow lorikeets, a figbird and a Lewin's honeyeater enjoying the spoils of fallen avocados on our driveway.

Scaly-breasted lorikeet

Rainbow lorikeet

Figbird

Lewin's honeyeater

Once the Lewin's honeyeater had its fill I managed to track it to a perch in the bottlebrush near the carport. This photo offers a nice sense of the way they can easily blend in among the branches and seed pods that develop once the flowers are spent. The purple flowers of a nearby double hibiscus and green leaves of various shrubs provide a nice contrasting bokeh too.

The final series of photos in this post are of a Lewin's honeyeater and a little wattlebird sharing time in the front birdbath, then the little wattlebird having it all to itself, the final photo dripping after a good dunking.

Waterbirds by the wall (May)

After my semi-regular Tuesday coffee catchup chatter, I headed to Meldrum Park for a bit of peace and quiet to do some reading. I had my camera just in case. I was very fortunate. Just glancing up for a break and casting my eye over North Creek I noticed some activity in a nearby gum ... a pair of scaly-breasted lorikeets in a nesting hole! A really nice set here showing one on lookout, then the second head just peering over the lip of the hollow and finally both perched on the edge of the hollow. Like I wrote ... a real treat before getting back to more reading 😁.

Enough reading, the day cleared a bit more, so I decided to head over for a wander along the wall. Predominantly water birds this day but a few other treats as well. Starting with a photo of some of the good sized prey you often see in the clear waters of Shaws Bay - this time some mullet, fortunate I feel that no sea eagles were about this low tide!

Next, as noted above, predominantly water birds as identified on each photo below.

Little pied cormorant basking and drying in the sun.

Same for a young darter.

Sacred kingfisher luminous in the sunshine.

Australian white ibis stalking it's shadow?

Pied oystercatchers wandering the sandy shore.

White-faced heron hunting in the shallows.

Moving on to some birds near the water but not "waterbirds" per se.

Next is two photos of a small bird flitting around the branches of the mangroves. Although  good clear shots, I took a while to identify this one. I'm pretty sure after my research it is a brown gerygone, so a new one for my archives.

 Always keen to be seen AND heard, I managed to catch this willy wagtail just as it was alighting on the boulder and then in all its glory being still upon that boulder!

And back near the carpark a browsing brush turkey popped up in a nice environment for a photo ... 

Finally for this post, a couple more of the australian white ibis offering a more majestic and commanding view than we are perhaps accustomed. These are roosting in the same tree on different days ... you marvel how they balance so easily on such precarious perches but the positions also highlight just how delicate and light these magnificent creatures we collectives label "birds" really are (especially the second photo with the single bird) ... these photos at Summerland House Farm.

Sharing a downed avocado

 A very belated post to get 2023 underway. The sequence below taken after a very noisy exchange drew my attention to our driveway just near the carport, under the avocado tree.

Specifically, the noise was over an avocado that had fallen to the ground. The sequence shows the interest taken by a pair of scaly breasted lorikeets - not a frequent visitor to our garden - and the guarding posture of the rainbow lorikeet being glutonous! Eventually, the rainbow loirkeet had its fill and departed, leaving the scaly breasteds to take it in turns feasting and being lookout.'

A nice treat for two similar birds with magnificent plummage highlighting that green is seldom "just green" 😀.

Winter around Ballina - part two

 So, on with the show, and the post to complete the winter trilogy 😕. Sometimes it is easy to forget (or take for  granted is probably a better description) the variety we have to enjoy. Colours, sounds, interactions, movements, environments ... even the same bird can look quite different in same setting - let alone a different setting, or changed light. Enjoy.

Ah yes, to begin this post, even the crow (more technically a torresian crow) can look magnificent! Curved beak, sleek shiny body and wings, bare black legs pierced by that all-seeing white eye. What a perch too!

Crow on the wall

This next sequence of four was taken in a bottle-brush on the lighthouse hill - a favourite spot to sit and enjoy the sight and sound of the Pacific Ocean, watch those denizens of the sea (the whales) migrate north to calve and south with their calves or just relax and read a book in the great outdoors. But this treat was about the birds ... the rainbow lorikeet (photo #2) is very common and very colourful and hard to miss even if you do not see them kamikaze past you their calls are very raucous and aggressive too! Not too far behind on ALL the characteristics is the scaly-breasted lorikeet, so you can imagine the racket when they decide to try to share the same nectar in the same tree 😅. I have a leaning towards the scaly-breasted lorikeet ... a little less exuberant and a little less gaudy but still striking and absolutely drop-dead gorgeous without being under or over stated ... of course, you be the judge and beauty is always in the eyes of the beholder!

Scaly-breasted lorikeet just checking

Rainbow lorikeet feasting

Scaly-breasted lorikeet on top of the world!

Scaly-breasted lorikeet on full alert

Next we have a couple of galahs grazing down on the earth rather than being silly and noisy on wires or tree branches. Foraging for seeds on the ground, enjoying a little winter shade.

Grazing galahs

Now babies, whatever kind are cute, right? Of course they are. This masked lapwing (plover) chick simply adds evidence to support the cute theory 👍. Who would imagine they grow to be such disagreeable (if quite stunning) adults!

Masked lapwing chick

Again, a treat from just being alert driving past the swampy lake beside the Bruxner Highway heading to Ballina from the west late one afternoon. First the black-necked stork having a bit to say in the setting haze of the afternoon sun providing a wonderfully soft landscape background (this one looks really good on canvas!). Very fortunate there is a lay-by you can turn into and that I had my camera with me. The third photo below was on another morning in the section of the same swamp further to the east along Teven road. Very still ... very calm ... very beautiful mirrored image of a black-winged stilt seeming to kiss itself very tenderly 😊 - or whatever you imagine it is doing!

Black-necked stork 

Not quite so raucous

Black-winged stilt

And to wind up this winter trilogy around Ballina, what is more iconic to that location than the pelican ... the big bird of the coast, the big glider and gulper that is both ponderous and graceful in flight and landing and paddling. A joy to behold in nearly any setting. We conclude with one setting atop the power poles near the sailing club, the other in full graceful flight heading along the river at the same site ... simply stunning.

Pelicans on a light (& pole)

In full glide mode