Thought I’d continue with the “Showman’ style theme.
We had taken a walk to the far west of the You Yangs Park to where the fenceline runs parallel to Hovell’s Creek. The creek is on private property so the best we are able to do is peek over toward the creek. The Rainbow Bee-eaters come down each year to nest in the creek banks, and hunt out over the You Yangs side of the fence, so it’s possible on the right day to get good views and photos of them in action. Such, however was not to be on our day.
Isn’t marketing wonderful! Hovell’s Creek is one of the few places named for the second half of the Hume and Hovell exploration team that first travelled down this way.
Hume gets all the good named spots and also all the good Marketing Opportunities.
Hume Highway, Hume City Council, Hume Building Society, Hume Bank, and so it goes.
Marketing is such that Hovell City Council just doesn’t have that right appeal, nor would you want to leave you money with Hovell Bank, or build your house along the Hovell Highway.
Isn’t Marketing Wonderful!
How about a product we know well. Glad-Wrap. Imagine if it had been called Sad-Wrap. Not much future there I’d guess.
We did hear a few Bee-eater calls from the creek line, but no real glimpses.
However further along the track we did hear, and see Pied Currawongs.
A family group of about a dozen or so birds were working over the grasses catching flying insects (Ants?)
They worked from several trees about 50-60m apart and simply flew from one branch over the open to another branch. Picking off an insect along the way.
I’ve seen Wagtails, and Flycatchers, and Jacky Winters work this way, but not such big birds. Hard to imagine they had the twisting and turning skills, but they certainly showed a range of aeronautical abilities and held us spell-bound for about 15 minutes.
A pity the light was running against us, but it was still great to be able to get a range of wing and body details.
Enjoy
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER - --doesn't mean I'm LOST 
Back in the dreamtime (when BOCA was around) one of the regular leaders of walks had some arrangement with the people who were the other side of the fence so once a year we used to get to cross the fence and walk along the creek – great birding as far as I can recall
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Too true. One of the great losses of BOCA, among other things I guess.
I’ve still got a BOCA sticker on the car 🙂
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Spectacular is the only word for these photographs! It must have been quite a sight.
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Hello Eleanor, I can’t ever recall seeing such big birds in full performance routine in such numbers.
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A stunning series of images, David!
A pity the Bee-eaters didn’t cross the fence for you but the Currawongs did give you some impressive images! Wondrful to view!
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I’ve never seen such antics, so it was a pretty good second place.
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These shapes against the sky look great, David. I’ve got two Currawongs visiting my garden and they are interesting birds to watch. I suspect them for scaring away the lovely Thornbills though. Getting the good light has been quite difficult for the past days and my yesterday’s action shots of Swamp Harrier with Magpies and Seagulls look so sad at 2000 ISO… but there’s some hope this Thursday so let’s keep on trying. Good luck with your Bee-eaters!
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Hi Adam, Oh the Bee-eaters was only an ‘on spec’ moment. Didn’t expect much, so wasn’t disappointed.
Currawongs are quite possesive of territory and no doubt ready to help themselves to Thornbill eggs and young, so its not suprising the little birds have moved on.
The weather is just dreadful. I don’t mind putting up with the rain, its the winds that I really can’t abide.
Will have to wait a bit longer to find out how the Brown Falcon young have fared, and also try and relocate the couple of pairs of Black-shouldered Kites that have been washed out and left the area.
In the meantime several familes of Magpie Larks have fledged their young so our local football oval has lots of young ‘tailless’ Muddies all crying for food.
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Wonderful captures of Currawongs capturing insects David. It is an unusual find, they may be low on nesting bird chicks and eggs to be doing this. Unless there is just too many of them in one area. From my reading if they are breeding they need to be in territorial pairs to feed their young, so maybe these are just a family clan similar to Maggies as you say. Beautiful flight images.
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Hello Ashley,
I don’t know much about them, as we only see them if we travel out a bit from home territory. They seemed in no hurry to move on, and were still in the general area when we left.
Perhaps it was more the availablity of the flying insects (ants?) that had just popped out.
PS, I’ve not been commenting on you site of recent times as WordPress seems to want me to sign in using a secret handshake that I just can’t determine. I can be logged in here, but unable to comment on your site. Such is the mystery of WordPress
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That is really strange David with the WordPress problem. They do have a way of ruining working systems in their efforts to modernize, and especially since they have so many cooks making the broth. I don’t know what has changed for you on my site, as others appear to comment, but numbers have dropped somewhat lately. Not sure if there is a reason I am not aware of. Maybe just do it by email ? Hope the weather is getting better for you. We are having days of gale force winds up here.
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Hi Ashley. Hmm I’m wondering if the email I subscribed with was not my WordPress master and since I’ve changed passwords a few times have I created a void in their system.
Will drop them a note to see if one of the Happiness Engineers has an answer
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What a beautiful bird and awesome photos as well. Especially the one with a bee in its beak and of course the wing span. Just beautiful.
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David, I just had a thought in regard to your problem with Commenting. I find I have a problem when I am not logged into WordPress, it asks for name, email etc. I have this trouble using my mobile phone for some reason, and sometimes with my computer, and once I log in and refresh page I can comment. This may mean your WordPress login is not changed either on your computer, if it does it it automatically, or in some other way. Sometimes there is a little WordPress symbol below comment box which says comment with WordPress, and you click that and it relogs you in. Not sure if this helps but thought to share it. Hope you are able to resolve it.
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HI Ashley, thanks for that. It seems to happen when I am logged in to WordPress. When I check the relog in box it goes to a page that doesn’t recognise my log in credentials, and seems to get it self into a loop, and by the time I get to your comment page, the comment, because it didn’t complete is now missing and I have to start all over again to repeat the process.
A good hint though might be if I’m logged in or not on the the iPad and the system thinks I’m not legit. Will try logging out of iPad and see.
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