Striated Pardalote - friendly and cute

Whilst staying at the Jasper Gorge on the Buchanan Highway in the NT between Top Springs and the Victoria Highway, I had a couple of wonderful encounters with Striated Pardalotes. They constantly pipe away, and come down very close to inspect you. This isn't always the case with these birds, often you can hear them but they stay high in the treetops, but not the ones in the photos. Hope you enjoy:

In case you have missed some more recent posts, here are some links:

Australian Owlet-nightjar, Southern Boobook and Pacific Barn Owl:

http://rwsboa2011.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/owlet-nightjar-southern-boobook-and.html

Varied Lorikeet, Cockatiels and Paperbark Flycatchers:

http://rwsboa2011.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/varied-lorikeets-cockatiels-and.html

Purple-crowned Fairy-wren:

http://rwsboa2011.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/purple-crowned-fairy-wren.html

Happy Birding!

Owlet Nightjar, Southern Boobook and Pacific Barn Owl

The weekend was a fairly good one for night birds. The Owlet Nightjar is much smaller than I had imagined, about the size of an adult fist when sitting on the road, or the size of a small rock, or some cow dung as I had assumed some of the lumps on the road were. I was alerted to the fact that maybe what I had seen was in fact an animal of some sort when one of the rocks "jumped" just before I past. I turned the car around and saw this beautiful little Owlet Nightjar:

On the same road (Buntine Highway) I also saw a Pacific Barn Owl. I have seen these before and on bitumen roads they sit and look straight at you, flying off at the last minute, but I had seen one just prior so was going quite slow in case there was another. Lucky for me, this one stayed long enough for some photos:

And the final night bird was seen in the early morning, during daylight, not a common sight for me - a Southern Boobook near Jasper Gorge in the Gregory National Park in the NT:

Happy Birding!