September 2018 – Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh: Ker-Lunk.
A Little Raven flew past my ear, and landed directly on the picnic table in front of me.
Grab camera. Now the bird is so close I can’t get focus. Move back on table, eventually get a great head shot.
With a boldness that had to be experienced to be understood, it walked over the table checking out anything that would be usable food.

Long time readers may recall that I used to do quite a few “Little Visits” when I was having my Nikon 1 Series excursus. But when it became clear Nikon had abandoned the system, well so did I. And with it of course my Little Visits. (Little being a reference to the N 1 system- hope that wasn’t too subtle)

But this visit has made me want to revive the series. Sort of suits a lot of what I’m currently doing in the field. Rather than chasing lots of birds, I’m back to working with just a few.

So, after checking the table, and the surrounds and yes, I know, I don’t feed birds, but I ‘accidentally’ dropped a bit of my muesli bar and my visitor was very quick to retrieve, fly to the river, soften it off in the water and then fly to a branch just over my head and deposit it into the waiting beak of its recently fledged young one. Ahh!

Continue reading “Little Visits: Little Ravens” →

It’s a little known factoid, that EE and I walk along the Werribee River near our unit most mornings. Weather permitting we do it before breakfast, and during the winter months that means the start is before daylight.
One of the access streets near our village is Hope Street. Now a friend of mine would like to add “NO” to the front of it, but I have those sorts of acquaintances. Some might even suggest that I attract them.

A highlight of our egress along Hope Street is greeting a friendly pair of Australian Magpies that have made the area their territory. She has had five nestings over the years since we’ve been passing. Her male has a damaged leg, and he is unable to stand or hunt on the ground. He is however quite capable of perching on fences and lamposts.

A few weeks back as I walked down Hope Street, a rambling carolling call from directly overhead stopped me. Looking up, I saw Maggie sitting in her newly installed “Grand Design” nest. Enterprising lass had used lots of discarded building material, wire, plastic and the like to add a new story to last year’s nest.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I took the camera down at first light to see how things were going.