April 2021 – Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER

From the Field Notes: Grebeing

April 29, 2021Posted in Field Notes, Great Crested GrebeTagged Field Notes, Great Crested Grebe6 Comments

It’s hard to ignore the call of a warm sunny morning, one with little wind, and the chance of fog on the water.

Conference between, #kneetoo, Mr An Onymous, and I, and the location of choice was Jawbone Reserve and the bird of interest, Great Crested Grebe.

Not that we expected to see the parents doting on the young as they have been out for a couple of weeks, and would be able to fend for themselves.

And the usual spots were the young had been last seen revealed no grebes at all.
So it was a walk about the tracks looking in some of the other ponds, and doing our best not to be an annoyance to, and being run over by, speeding local cyclists.

Then far out on one of the larger ponds, among a gaggle (?) of ducks and assorted coots, Mr A spotted two young grebes, heads all tucked in keeping warm in the sunshine.

We waited and just as well, as not so long after they began their morning duties of cleaning, preening and looking about. One of the adults was not too far away keeping a ‘weather’ eye on them.

Around a corner paddling remarkably fast came ‘Motor’ Grebe with a big wash ahead of its chest.
It stopped closer to where we were and began to hunt, and quickly showed how adept they had become in just a few weeks.

The other two paddled over to see if they too could get in the action.

Way down the pond, the second adult made an appearance and the two adults swam toward one another, but. That is for another page in the book.

An interesting fact(oid) is the birds were nearly hunted to extinction in the 1800s as the feathers were used for hats (ladies),and the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds was set up to protect them.
Cocker, Mark; Mabey, Richard (2005). Birds Britannica. London: Chatto and Windus. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-7011-6907-7.

Enjoy

Much of the baby feather is going and the markings are changing. Not bad for only a month out of the egg.

The head feathers are beginning to show the development of that famous Crested headdress

Wing stretch of the well developed wings. They usually fly at about 10 weeks from hatching.

Saturday Evening Post #131 : Laughter

April 24, 2021Posted in Saturday Evening PostTagged Saturday Evening Post7 Comments

Sometimes I ponder the direction of the Saturday Night Posts, and worry that I start to sound like some out of context guru who can hand out unhelpful, if not misleading, platitudes.

It is like, at least to me, that I’m developing a creed of not believing in laughter. Yet we live in a world of constant change; seasons, food preferences, political landscapes, health and friends. And so many others for such a long list.

I used to write with a pencil, then a ballpoint, and a pen.(actually at school we used nibs and ink, but really those scratchings don’t qualify), now a lightweight untethered keyboard sits on my lap as my fingers fly over the keys. (mostly the backspace one for corrections, but hopefully I puck erer plikc or pick up most of them. 🙂

Part of those changes at a personal level is my own photography. Equipment, processes and styles rotate about, some lead down rabbitholes into a wonderland, sometime the rabbithole hits a large old rock or root and ends.

So I hope that it all doesn’t become to staid, and too predictable and too serious.

#kneetoo and I, had been walking in the Eynesbury forest and due to concerns of her aforementioned knee we had kept our perambulations to just a few short distances.

It was time to go home, and as we approached the park exit, we thought one quick look down a bush track might take us into Jacky Winter territory.
So, we went.

Just for a few minutes, mind.

At one of Jacky’s known haunts, we stopped and looked and listened, no familiar “Peter, peter peter” calls from the area. “Oh”, she says, “let’s go up to the next track bend.”

We went. Quiet as. Not content we moved further down the track to the next, and then the next and finally turned a corner about a kilometre from where we started.

Way up head she noted the flash of white feather on grey wing, and so we set off.

Jacky and Jacky were working on insects on the trackline. A simple process for them. Start on one main branch, fly out grab an insect and land on the a branch on the other side of the track. Makes for great photos of these beautiful little birds sitting tummy down as they usually do. Then they would reverse the process and flit to the first branch, and then back again.

I decided for the ‘inflight’ Jacky shot.

Missed the first few completely. Set up the focus to grab Jacky as it launched, and hopefully the focus would be in the right spot.
Try again. Great shot of the forest behind, but no bird. 🙂
Now it’s been said, practice makes perfect. Or as the ‘positive thinking’ gurus say, Perfect practice make perfect.

Jacky seemed content to let me try again, and eventually I managed a bird at the very edge of the frame.
I think Jacky saw my satisfaction while ‘chimping’ the result, and with a quick scolding ‘Peter’, for goodbye, the pair flew off into the forest.

#kneetoo and I made our way back to IamGrey and home.

An encounter with this most amiable little birds is never permanent, but an ephemeral moment.

As Deng Ming-Doa writes, ” As we laugh at the world, we should realise that understanding the changeable nature of life (and the universe) is the swiftest way to joy.”

Enjoy the richness of your next laughter.

Saturday Evening Post #130 : Renewal

April 17, 2021April 17, 2021Posted in Uncategorized7 Comments

Now that daylight saving has finished for the summer, my early morning pre-breakfast walks are no longer in the darkness of pre-dawn.

Lots of trees, the bends in the creek, and other shapes that I passed in the darkness, now have detail, colour, and form.

The brilliance of the sparkling stars against their velvet cushion is replaced by soft warm (in kelvin temp) light melding over the scene. Just the brightest of the stars lingers in eye-sight for the first few minutes.
The warm of the air in the summer mornings is now a crisp autumn bracing tinge but not yet the biting cold of a frosty morning.

Well, at least most days when it’s not overcast and grey all round. 😦

The interesting thing about a change of season is the renewal.
The ancients explained it best by the comings and goings of the mystical Persephone.
She was the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Persephone was kidnapped by that (evil master of darkness) Hades.
Every autumn Persephone returned to her underworld home, taking with her life giving power of seed, and so the ground was barren over the winter months. Then, come spring, “She’s Back” and with her the richness of the spring growth.

All very good for the ancients, but it did provide a good explanation, if somewhat coloured with fantasy of the changes of the seasons.

For us as bird photographers, it often feels like Hades has been at work.
The waders are heading for Siberia, the local Snipe have gone, ready for their ocean hop to Japan, and most bushbirds have finalised their nesting and are settling into winter territories.

We wait for the arrival of the winter flocks and hope to see bright rich red sitting on the fences soon.

Mr An Onymous gave me the heads-up that Flame Robin females were at the 100 Steps park, so we will hopefully this year be able to catch a few sightings.

Winter may in its way bring cold and shorter days, but it also brings renewal as the birds, and the plants have a time to rest up, ready for Persephone to make her re-appearance.

For extra bonus points:
The Degraves Flour mill that used to occupy the Degraves Street location in the heart of Melbourne CBD still has the Degraves family statue of Demeter perched high atop the building.
Here is a clip from Google Maps Street view showing her benevolent oversight of the growth of the city.

(I used to work in that building in another time in the universe)

Little Visits: When I Grow up I want to be a Black-shouldered Kite

April 15, 2021April 17, 2021Posted in Little Visits, Sacred KingfisherTagged Little Visits, Sacred Kingfisher9 Comments

Ha! Kids today have such ambitions.

For the queasy of stomach, time to click away.

This is just about straight out of the “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!” archives.

It was a cold wet morning. However #kneetoo was keen to see how the little Kingfishers were progressing, and we only had a narrow space in the ‘very busy’ diary.

Knowing they had been on the wing for several days, our probability of anything other than a chance encounter were slim to say the least.

Nothing around the now abandoned nest site, nor by the old blackened stump training ground.

I managed a sighting of a small blue blur in the forest and headed over for a looksee. And sure enough a young one perched among the branches of a black wattle.

Then with no warning, an adult turned up with quite a large bundle. And at first it was difficult to make out. Not a large skink or beetle.
Are they really legs, or is it a fish tail I could see?

Then she flipped it about in the air and it was a mouse! No way!

At first the young one didn’t seem all that interested, but after a few more flips and attempts to turn it round so the small end would go down first the adult presented it to the young one.

Now on an aside, your average field-mouse is around 20gm. Your average grown Sacred Kingfisher might come in a touch over 30gm. So I’m guessing the little dude was at best, 25gm.
UPDATED: HANZAB give the bird a weight of 55g which would be a more reliable weight I think. Still give the little dude 35gm and it’s going to be a 55gm tubby blue blob for awhile. 🙂

It took the mouse head first, not headfirst, even that suits. 🙂

And so began a 10-15 minute battle for the young one to eventually ingest the mouse.
On quite a number of occasions, it had to stop, and I guess catch its breath, or simply rearrange the internal spaces to make space.

A couple of times it began swaying back and forth on the branch, and I feared it was going to choke and fall off the branch. Not much in my skill set for resuscitating a downed Kingfisher.

And slowly—very slowly—the mouse began to disappear.

After it was all over, a tubby little kingfisher gave a few shakes of its body, to rearrange all the feathers and no doubt the internals, and then sat. More likely squatted.

A few minutes quietly sitting to let the digestion process begin, and a tubby blue blur sped off through the forest.

Where is Ripley when you need him?

Saturday Evening Post #129: Finding Expression

April 10, 2021April 10, 2021Posted in Saturday Evening PostTagged Saturday Evening Post11 Comments

Deng Ming Tao asks an interesting question in an article entitled “Angles”.

It is worth considering, he asks, what does it take to make an angle?

You can make a table from a plank of wood, on two upright slabs. It might even look like Stonehenge. Yet, while the stones have stood the test of time, three loosely arranged planks would most likely topple.

A table manufactured by a craftsperson, is a joy to behold. Each piece in place, each piece supporting the whole, and each, a small work of art in its own right. The table is a greater because of the strength of all the small parts.

“To put things together and then hold them in proper angle is one of the miracles of skill.”

Over the years, my own photography has been that sort of journey. Each new skill learned has lead to an expression of a subject in a harmonious balanced way. And please don’t get confused that I’m talking about some compositional rule.
Each subject requires the tensions of the ‘angles’ to be suitable to best express the mood, emotion, feel and vision.

Like so many pursuits, photography has lead me on a voyage across wonderful waters. But there always comes, as a sailor says, the time when it’s no longer the right thing to hug the shoreline, but rather to unfurl the sails and head out into the wider ocean.

Not all is plain sailing, to continue the analogy, but securing the angles with knowledge, skill, experience and dogged determination, will result in photographs that carry within them a little of the photographer’s vision. Built, like a finely crafted table, on our aspirations.

#kneetoo, and I were on the road outside the Treatment Plant. Early morning light, and as we drove along looking in each paddock, we missed the Hobby sitting on a post. Then as we drove by, I noticed it. Too late to stop.

Down the road 100 m, and turn around. Then drive leisurely back as if we still hadn’t noticed it.
The birds in the area are very familiar with passing vehicle traffic.
It passes.
They barely blink.

Passed without any problem, and then to park off the road, the bird was on #kneetoo’s window side. She was happy.

I slipped out of the door, and edged along the top of IamGrey.
The bird was still unperturbed.

A large truck came around a corner and down the road toward us. The bird waited. Took notice of the oncoming vehicle. Did some Hobby calculation about the speed of the approach, our position on the roadside, and concluded perhaps that there wasn’t going to be enough room for all three of us.

A quick unfold of the wings. It was gone.

Enjoy

Little Visits: They’ve Flown

April 7, 2021Posted in Sacred KingfisherTagged Sacred Kingfisher9 Comments

For several previous days, it was apparent that the young Kingfishers were getting ready to fly. Interestingly, they are pretty much fully developed when they fly, and while the parents still top them up with food, they appear to have some hunting ability for easy to find prey

#kneeetoo, and I arrived early one morning and waited for the usual food supply activity. After a bit of time had passed, it was obvious that something had changed. A further hunt around the nest area, and following the adults, we soon found, the first of the flown young. It’s plaintive cry for food was taken care of by both the adults, and just occasionally would one venture to the nest opening and deposit a top up snack, so, a second one was still nest bound.

The following day, it too had broken free from the nest and we found them moving about the forest with ease.
A tree had caught fire a few days before and the local fire and park people had cleaned up the mess, and cut down the old red-gum tree, as the fire had eaten through the inside. So there was a lot of downed timber as well as cleared spaces, and the young Kingfishers were taken there by the adults to sharpen their hunting skills.
It was a bonus for your photographers as the venerable old gum had supplied some fine landing spaces for the Kingfishers and some of the larger trunk pieces a good place to sit and watch the activity.
As the morning went on, the young became engrossed in being fed, and learning to feed themselves and completely ignored out presence, often landing only an arm’s reach or so away. Sometimes too close for the lens to gain focus.

In the end, a mid-morning rain brought closure for our efforts and the young took off to find some shelter.

Saturday Evening Post #128 : White-bellied Sea-Eagle

April 3, 2021Posted in Saturday Evening Post, White-bellied Sea-eagle8 Comments

From our recent early morning trip to the Western Treatment Plant.

The Plant holds many great photo opportunities for such a wide range of birds, but probably the highlight for us, other than a rare species, is the White-bellied Sea-Eagle.
They don’t seem to claim the area for roosting or breeding, but rather it’s an opportune smorgasbord for the picking.

It is not highly unusual to see them, but most times they are just too far away for great photography. And give up on the idea of ‘sneaking’ up on one.

So a conversation starter for the day, as we head into the plant, is, ‘I wonder if we’ll see a Sea-Eagle today?”

As we ventured further into the Plant, at Lake Borrie, one of the busiest ponds, we saw several White-winged Black Terns fly past, and I parked the IamGrey a little further along the track, with good views across the lake, and #kneetoo called, “A Sea-Eagle out on the tree.”
And there was.
How could anyone doubt! It might be a knee, but that doesn’t affect the eyesight it seems. 🙂

The Sea-Eagle was way too far on the other side of the lake for good images, so I decided to walk back up the roadway to where the Terns had been working. However after a few minutes it was obvious that they had moved on.

A Little Grassbird caught my attention in the reeds, when all of a sudden the high pitched call of startled Pink-eared Ducks rolled across the lake.
Conclusion? The Sea-Eagle had taken to wing, and knowing its predisposition for duck-dinner, the Pinkies were not hanging around waiting for an invitation to share a meal.

But, where, I kept peering was the Sea-Eagle? With the sky covered in Pinkies, it took a few moments to pickup the slowly climbing white shape above the alarmed ducks.

I’m often a bit jealous of my seaborne photographers and their work with Sea-Eagles. At least it’s certain where they will be travelling—along the shoreline. Inland birds have all points of the compass to choose from when they fly, and it is almost always away from any photographer.

This bird had a purpose, and I pretty much held my breath as the shape grew larger and larger in the viewfinder, and I realised I was on its flight path and it would run by me on the left. Time to fill up a memory card, so I switched to multi-frame and began to shoot small 3-4 frame bursts.
Still it kept coming.
The early morning light—astute readers will remember form a recent post, “Front Light” —was coming over my shoulder, and all I had to do was keep the bird in the viewfinder and follow along.

Eventually, it was too close, and too large in frame, and went by me on its way to its next appointment.

Little Visits: Kingfisher Feeding

April 1, 2021Posted in Sacred KingfisherTagged Sacred Kingfisher9 Comments

Still continuing with the Kingfisher Nursery.
The young had been hatched about 3 weeks, and were now quite grown. But almost impossible to see as the tree opening had a rather large lump of wood that covered part of the hole, and it was difficult to get a glimpse.

Kingfisher young fly pretty much complete, in that they are capable in a few days of fledging to be self-sufficient. Although the parent birds keep up a good food supply.

Here then is a selection from that last week feeding.

The setup is pretty much as described previously. Main flash high and to the left. Using the Auto FP setting on the Nikon D500 to override the usual problem of working with faster shutter speeds. On Auto FP, the SB910 Flash-units fire multiple times in what seems to be a continuous stream of light from the beginning to end of the exposure so all the sensitive chip receives an equal amount of light without any part ‘blacking’ out. Downside is that the poor old SB’s have to drain the charge, and I can only get two or three frames per in or out flight. Then of course the battery has to recharge the unit, so it’s a few seconds delay. I’m sure that Eric Hosking with his half ton of batteries or Steven Dalton in his studio set up didn’t have that problem 🙂

Enjoy