Meeting the family

Melbourne turned on one of those great days for the long-weekend holiday.

Not too hot, plenty of sunshine, mild breeze.  Load up the car and go for a picnic.  Well, put in the cameras and to look for Red-capped Robins.

There is never a guarantee about what we might find, but within about 10 minutes we had found both of the young redcaps we had been folowing, and their doting father.  Although I think he is now pretty much in advisory category rather than working hard to feed his young family.  They seem both quite grown up, and taking on much more of the female’s red bonnet and buff chest.  What was a surprise was that the female turned up.  She is quite the well dressed young thing.  So its likely she has moulted into winter dress.  And what a stunning combination she is showing, not a feather out of place, and with a lovely apricot wash on her chest.

He, on the other hand, is still much in the process of preparing for winter and has a few streaky feathers in his cap, and a collection of used feathers elsewhere.

The young are scruffy, but very active.  One of them plopped down on a branch less than a metre from my camera and sat there for nearly a minute.  It is always interesting to see them closeup, as it’s easy to forget how small they really are. We look at the pictures on the big screen and forget the scale of the bird.  This little tiny breathing wisp, is all a red-cap really is.