Notes to readers of this Blog


NOTES TO READERS OF THIS BLOG

Thank you for dropping by to check out my blog. You will see a lot of other Blogs about birds I follow down the left hand side. I strongly encourage you to check some of these out as well, they are entertaining and I love to see birds from all over the world, I hope you do too.
Cheers,
Richard

Friday 15 June 2012

Cockatiels, Budgies, Southern Whiteface and others

The north side of Emily Gap can be accessed from Undoolya Road, that is so long as you know the right track to take (better to ask a local if you don't live in Alice) but pretty much all tracks to the right of the road heading out of Alice Springs probably end up somewhere near or there-abouts!

I headed down towards the river (dry sandbed most of the time) and stumbled across a pair of Cockatiels in a tree next to the track. I often have this same thought "if they just sat there quietly, I would never know they were there, why don't they just sit still and quiet?" Lucky for me, they chirped as I was just past the tree, looked back and spotted the male sitting in a hollow formed by a broken branch, and then the other one perched above on another branch:


Next was a group of Budgerigars high in one of the trees in the river. They decided that I was getting too close even though they were a long way up the tree and I was still a fair distance from the tree. I eventually got back into the car and headed back up the track. My first inclination that there was a lot of feeding happening was the flurry of activitiy as I approached in the car. Birds of all different shapes and sizes were scurrying everywhere, finches, Budgerigars, honeyeaters, babblers, songlarks and what I thought was a few button quails. I continued on a bit further back towards the road and just couldn't help but stop. Flocks of Busdgerigars were going everywhere, some 5 - 10, others up to 50 and the occasional burst of 100+ out of the grasses. I saw a likely spot near a corkwood tree and crept up slowly as to try to not disturb them. Little buggers had sentries on the lookout, but they didn't fly away en-masse as I was expecting, just a few fluttering up from the grass and to a tree beyond. But some of them sat in the corkwood, and I could see, some of them were younger than adults, see if you can spot the difference for yourselves:



Finally a Southern Whiteface sat still and close enough for a photo just near where the above budgies were playing:


After thinking I had seen button quails earlier, I had decided that I wasn't likely to get a photo and had given up trying. As I was walking back to the car this time, I almost stepped on one. It ran behind a little bush, and I quickly slipped the camera to the close focus setting. I knew where it was, and I backed up a bit, ready for it to fly off or wander out. The minutes ticked by, I waited. More minutes and I was starting to worry I had missed my opportunity. Stupidly, I stepped towards the bush only to watch in dismay as the quail flew from a clump of grass to the right of the bush I had been watching and my reflexes were too slow to get the camera up and shooting. Another missed chance. One day I will get a photo I'm sure.

My last photo for this post is of a beautiful Splendid Fairy-wren I took the other day. I could lie and say I took it with these others, but what would be the point. I really liked the photos:






Happy Birding!

2 comments:

  1. Buenas capturas,me gustan mucho las de la ultima ave.Saludos

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful light in the Fairy-wren photos the splash of blue offsets it nicely! Well Done!

    ReplyDelete