Author: David Jenkins

Natural History Photographic Essayist

Enjoying the Evening Light at The Office

Posted in The Office, Werribee River ParkTagged 3 Comments 
 Flow with whatever is happening 
and let your mind be free. 
Stay centered 
by accepting whatever you are doing. 
This is the ultimate.
Zhuang Zhou

Truth be told, its been quite a long time between drinks at “The Office”.
A lot been happening, but mostly, the weather, a sore heel that slows down my walking, lack of birds and perhaps general sloth has kept us away from The Office at the Werribee River Park.

You could also add the amount of time spent looking for and not finding those elusive Sacred Kingfishers, but that would be at tad churlish methinks.

So it was with quite a high degree of expectation that we loaded up Sir Perceval, and headed on one of his amazing Quests.

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Wrestling with the enigma that is Goschen

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , 9 Comments 
"The oftener one sees,

the better one knows;

the better one knows,

the more one loves."

Charles Kingsley

We’ve been up to the family acres for the annual family pilgrimage. Somehow or other the January time frame suits this sojourn and regardless of the weather we journey up.
Swan Hill is the destination and of late we’ve been staying across the river (That would be the Murray River for the geographically embarrassed), at the Murray Downs Golf Resort.

When I was but a mere broth of a lad, the area was mostly salt bush and mud flat, but good old ingenuity, and the application of many hundreds of thousands of dollars has transformed the area to a fine golfclub resort.  And the side benefit for the average birder is that the many water features and trees has provided a suitable haven for many of the birds of area. But, more of that on another blog methinks.

A few kilometres down the road from Swan Hill is a small isolated patch of scrub, that is now incorporated into the “Goschen Roadside Reserve”.

And is wont of those in the Parks department it is now suitably fenced off to keep undesirables on the outside and protect that which is on the inside. Not that there is much to protect anymore.

And so begins the enigma. Goschen was to be a little township that happened after the first world war. (Yes, it should be in caps, but really does it deserve such honour?) Many such small communities were established.  But, the one thing about Goschen is— Lack of Water (in caps because, well, it’s the singularly most important part of the enigma)

Drive just 5 more minutes down the road and you’ll come over a sandy rise and all is green before you.  The result of irrigation. Water. And the rich farming area of grapes, stone fruit and citrus.  Just 5 minutes.  Had the water extended out to Goschen, then all would have been different and hopes and dreams would have turned to riches, instead of just being blown away like the dust.

To their credit, the early settlers and the government officials of the time, did try.  A school, community hall, cricket field and tennis courts were all part of the scheme and were built.  Now all that remains is a plaque for the school—and some of the old concrete flooring in the toilets—the community hall rapidly deteriorating as the fencing off has protected it somewhat from vandalism, and also meant it is ignored by the fence erectors. A search among the long grass to the east will also find the remains of the concrete cricket pitch.

The years past and the area, as often happened began to revert to its ordinary existence. And the area became a little haven for birds both local and migrants.

And another challenge. An area that can be an honeypot on occasions and frustratingly quiet on others. It’s not just a seasonal thing, nor a food thing. It’s Goschen.

 

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Postcards from Mt Rothwell

Posted in Mt Rothwell, Superb Fairy-wrenTagged , , , 10 Comments 
We don’t need to know what it looks like (whatever it is), 
but what it might mean—what it might feel like. 
More than ever, we need images that speak to a deeper part of our humanity 
than the thirst for details. 
We need, and hunger for, context, insight, hope, 
and the kind of visual poetry that stirs our hearts, 
sparks our imaginations.
David DuChemin

Posted 28 Jan 2018

A few days before our sojourn up to the ‘old’ country, we were part of Werribee Wagtails quarterly bird count at Mt Rothwell.

In line with the weather all around, it was hot.  But we managed some good numbers in the first morning walk and at lunch time were sitting in the shade of the office area.  The ranger in charge  (Should that be hyphenated?) Ranger-in-charge.  There—setup a hose and sprinkler to give the little garden area a bit of relief.  This one action of course brought all the small bushbirds out for a bit of a cool off.

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In the Cool of the Morning

Posted in Blue-faced Honeyeater, Peaceful Dove, Swan HillTagged , , , 6 Comments

We’ve done our week up at the family acres, and enjoyed some great family time. Super fun to catch up with the relatives and share memories, food and great conversation.  But.  The heat was not enjoyable.  Funny, we all noted as little kids, we were much too busy running under the sprinkler on the lawn and enjoying cold drinks to really notice how hot it actually was.

Don’t start me on ‘global warming’.  It was always hot, with many days over 100 F, (38C) so not much has changed.

We had the opportunity to fit in a bit of bird photography, and choose the early morning cool as the best time.  Evenings are good too, but there is always a lot of dust in the air and the colour temperature brings white balance complications.

One spot at the Murray Downs Golf Resort is a haven for Rainbow Bee-eaters and White-breasted Woodswallows.  They congregate there in large numbers, so it was a good place to start.

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+ It is So Hot +

Posted in Goschen, Hooded RobinTagged , 6 Comments 
“It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. 
Don't concentrate on the finger 
or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
 Bruce Lee

“It’s 115 degrees in the Waterbag”, my dear old Dad was wont to proclaim on scorching hot days.  (115 being in degrees Fahrenheit)
We were travelling past Goschen after a week up at the family acres and suffering through a run of days above 40C. This morning it was already 44C and not even yet mid-morning. (And we had at least 4 hours of roadwork ahead of us).

To add to the difficulty there was a strong northerly wind blowing as well.   For the geographically and meteorologically challenged, that means the winds are carrying very hot air down from the interior of Australia and a quick look at your average Aussie map will show that there is a lot, mostly, of desert out there.  About 70% of the land mass is semi arid or arid.  That’s about 5.3 Million square kilometers.
And most of it was concentrating on Goschen.

To be honest, we should have just kept going, a nice cool drink and a pie at the Eaglehawk Bakery was our next stop.
But, well, you never know do you?

However after about 30 mins of blistering wind, little shade and myriad flies, it was time, as they say, to let discretion have the better of the moment, and we sat in the pathetic shade of the old—now badly deteriorating and neglected— Goschen Hall.  A quick cuppa, a snack, and, well, we’d be on the road.

Speaking of family, my Mum always used to say, “Nothing like a hot cup of tea on a wretched day.” And as the kettle was always on the stove, the teapot sitting on the side and plenty of rich sugar in the bowl, perhaps she was right about a hot, black, sugar rich  cuppa.   At least the time taken to sit, sip, enjoy, and talk about things did help to pass the time away.

We’d seen little of the bird life of the area that morning. Unlike a few days before when only time for other commitments dragged us on our journey.  More of that on another blog.

As we sat, a tiny blur of wings landed in a tree not far from us.

A Hooded Robin

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Sharing a Few Golden Moments over Breakfast

Posted in European GoldfinchTagged 6 Comments 
No one longs for "content", 
what we want is connection.
We want hope.
We want to look at something and feel
something deeper than whatever it is
that moves my finger to click
the Like Button.
David DuChemin.

 

January 14, 2018

Long time blog readers will no doubt be pleased to have noted that I didn’t do the normal, ‘bare my creative soul’ post this year and instead seemed to have skipped it this time around.  And rightly so too, as someone said not so long ago ‘the blog is good, but I just ignore all that philosophical stuff”—not exactly the words used, but I’ve cleaned it up for general consumption.

I’ve been working with a photo mentor, David DuChemin, (again should be obvious from the direction some of the posts here have taken), good to have a mentor, keeps me focused, honest with my work, and challenges the things that I see as ‘comfortable’.

But they do get picky.  Like “So, what’s your project for 2018?”  Blank look, stares at feet, thinks of principal’s office all those years ago, and responds,  Ohhh, I dunno!

And what’s with the project stuff anyway.  I take pictures.  More pondering and ever so slightly drifting toward the philo-pile commented on above.

So I was sitting in the kitchen, popping the muesli into the bowl, in the early morning, and looking out the window at the wonders of the world outside. Not much really as a colorbond fence is about all that stares back at me.  When I heard a lovely musical bird call.
Looking up it was one of a pair of European Goldfinch that have been messing about in the yard over the past few months.

Then, it departed and a much higher pitched and urgent call came from the clothes-line on the other side of the fence.   And as I strained to see thought the fence, behold—as they say in all the best scripts—behold (well it was so good I thought I’d use it again) a young Goldfinch landed on the fence in front of me.

 

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Life with a sprinkle of Choughness

Posted in Uncategorized, White-winged Chough, You YangsTagged 2 Comments

Long term readers will know of my fascination with all things Choughness.

White-winged Choughs can be both frustrating and rewarding to follow.  Some families seem to have a high human tolerance and I’ve had them hunt around my feet and sit on the same log with me.  Others. No matter how much time I spend, they just keep moving on.
They are not the world’s greatest aeronauts and I often think that if they can run to the next location that is their preferred method of locomotion.

They also have quite well established family rules. Which they understand, while I must guess what is going on.  And at just about every encounter, I come away impressed by some new view of choughness.

One family we see regularly in the You Yangs have just managed to get a couple of young ones off the nest.   Now comes the job of teaching these little ones all the rules of choughness.   And its a big task.  The young birds are quite clueless. And they have an average attention span of about 1 millisecond.   “Is it food”, seems to be the total of their ability to reason.   So the adults have to spend quite a bit of time working with young. And because of their lack of reason, they are easily enticed away by other families offering “bigger grubs”.  Oh boy, I gotta go

Choughs need quite a large family size, at least six or seven adults to raise a young.  Larger groups have more flexibility and its reported, more success.

Found the family at work around some rocks, and settled down for a sprinkle of choughness to add to my day.

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Grebes On Show

Posted in Australasian GrebeTagged 12 Comments

We have as they say, been having a bit of a lean time with our birds of late.  Seems the weather, the season, the food, the  lack of time in the bush, all have contributed to a fairly, well, lean period.

We were all prepared to enjoy a season with a pair of Jacky Winter, but due to unfortunate circumstances, perhaps bad weather, they lost the clutch a few days from flight.  A local Tawny Frogmouth clutch came, and went, and so did the various Magpie-lark families.  So its been a bit of a well, you know, lean time.

We have been watching a pair of Australasian Grebes at the Werribee Mansion Ornamental Lake, and they have had as similar story of clutches started, but not completed.
So it was quite intriguing to watch the pair in breeding plumage potter about on the water, but not really get much accomplished.

Then a couple of weeks ago, we found they had begun again to ferry weed and mud about and had a platform securely in the reeds.

And today we took a few minutes to go see how things had progressed and, well, they had progressed.

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Morning Among the Water Birds

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , 5 Comments

Been awhile since I made an attempt at bringing Birds as Poetry up to date.
My apology also takes a turn in another direction as my ‘creative’ output has been to hardcopy books and end of year calander things.   I got a super calendar from my Singapore mate Lynzwee, and it was made by a company called ZNO  zno.com.
Didn’t take me long to figure out I’d like some of those and so I’ve been doing the appropriate file transfer and fiddling with pages on the web to get them just right.
Also did a book of the Great Egret from the Veil Ballet.   I don’t suppose its such a big deal, but I was so impressed by the bird’s simple expressions that I wanted them to appear in something that extended the feel of the moment.

So Blurb got the job done.  While I am yet to put my hand up as a Lightroom fanboy, I have to say it did make quite a presentable book.  Even if I had a few stops and starts to get what I was looking for.

When I look back over it, the images themselves are each quite simple, but as Dave Delmea quoted by David DuChemin says,

” The images themselves are quite simple, perhaps plain, but because of the lack of complexity it might be easy for a viewer to look at the content and feel they ‘I’ve got it”, without much consideration.

The strength comes when you begin to take in the more understated things. The angles, contrasts, colour contrasts and movements. In a book the viewer can compare, consider and feel the subtle element differences.”

So I’ve  spent the time doing the book.

All work and no play, makes for a restless photographer, so EE and I made a dash one bright early morning down the the WTP

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Picture Postcards: Egret Veil Ballet

Posted in Great EgretTagged 3 Comments
10 November 2017

 

Whether it is a movie, a painting, a symphony, or a ballet, 

it’s always insightful and inspiring to see someone 

express themselves through the arts.

Justen Eason

 

A few pictures on the blog, will in no way express the rich time that I spent with this bird.

For its own reasons, it began its morning cleaning session.  I was able to move around its isolated position to keep the light right and the backdrop just a hint.  The superb elegance of the shaping, caressing and supple body movement kept me enthralled for around 30 minutes or so.  Enough to make over 6o super images, all of which has a subtlety of finesse that its impossible to bring it all together in just a few special images.

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Picture Postcards: A new direction 2 November 2017

Posted in Picture Postcards, Purple-crowned LorikeetTagged , , , 7 Comments 
I have an emotional connection to every subject
I photograph. You have to love your subject
before others love your photos. 
Art Wolfe.

You are Welcome here

I was chatting with my mate Len from BirdLife Werribee (formerly Werribee Wagtails), conservation warrior and dedicated blog-follower.  Among other things we talked about blog content and agreed that just following one bird or species made an interesting blog that was self-contained.  The other thing I’ve been pondering is that my body of work is overwhelming me to the point that much of it never gets to see the light beyond the harddrive storage.

Add to that I’ve been following David DuChemin’s blog/facebook/instagram of late and have been forced back to the roots of our craft. Images that have a connection, as Art Wolfe says, “To Create Visual Connections”.

Among David D’s prolific output is an occasional short blog post he entitles “Postcards from …name of place.”

So I’ve considered it might be better rather than lamenting my lack of drive to edit the best photos from a day out, and then let them languish for lack of words, that I might publish them as a blog here, and let the mood, emotion, interest and poetry of the visuals carry the bulk of the work of reaching out to the reader.  After all someone said “A picture is worth a thousand words”, and millions of words have been written about it. 🙂

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Sacred Time

Posted in Sacred Kingfisher, Uncategorized, Werribee River ParkTagged , 10 Comments

Sacred Kingfishers on the Werribee River Park. 12 October 2017

There are billions of photographs out there. The world in no way 
needs more mediocre images. 
What the world does need is more passionate photographs, 
images that begin life conceived by the eyes, 
but expressed through the lens by the heart. 
If you are going to create better photographs, 
begin with things you care about deeply. : David DuChemin
You are Welcome Here.

“It’s a Sacred Kingfisher,” Mr An Onymous called. To no one in particular, and those around him just looked and nodded hoping that was the end of the outburst.

“Pee-p, Pee-p, Pee-p, Pee-p”.  It is a Sacred Kingfisher says Mr A.  But quietly, to himself.

He dropped me a note and I was glad of the info.  We’d been talking of their return the past few weeks.

I told EE.  She put on her skates and was ready to go.   Those who follow her Flickr posts will be well aware of the time, energy and effort that she put into the pair the past season. It is, “Something she cares deeply about”. And being passionate, as David DuChemin is wont to remind, “Photographing those things you are passionate about tells me several things. It shows me more of you. It shows me more of the thing you love. And it makes better photographs.”

So we went.  Now the access road to the “Office”—Werribee River Park— for new readers, has been closed these last six weeks or so.  The road was ripped up by hoons and 4wds when it was wet, and the road had become nigh on impassable for normal vehicles.  Think Sir Perceval—i20— for new readers. But a check the day before had shown Parks Vic had sent in the heavy duty toys and the road had been re-graded, and surfaced and was a version of Dorothy’s Yellow Brick Road, for all the Wizard of Oz fans. So donning our “Ruby Slippers” —or Silver ones if you’ve read the book— we set off in search of Oz, or Sacred Kingfishers if they turned up first.

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Enjoying the Freedom of   Flight

Posted in "Western Treatment Plant", 29 Mile Road, Black-shouldered Kite, Jon Young, WTPTagged , , , 10 Comments

Black-shouldered Kites Growing up. October 10, 2017

Waiting is not Patience. Patience is about the moment,
 an intersection of the strongest story with the right light,
 the best timing and an awareness of the around.
 Waiting makes us pay attention. David Duchemin

You’re Welcome Here.

We’ve been tracking a clutch of Black-shouldered Kites down on the 29 Mile Road at the Western Treatment Plant.  The young have been on the wing now for over two months, and are now the expert hunters.  They are just moulting out the last of their juvenile ginger and grey feathers and the eye is taking on the rich ruby colour of adult-hood.

The best perches in the area are along the roadside, the few trees and fenceposts and man-made solar panels and the like.  And because of their consummate skill in the air, and the vast quantity of mice in the area, the young kites seem quite oblivious to human presence.

So sometimes it’s possible to get right into the world of the hunting birds—not as a long distance observer—in a hurry—but to take the time the learn about the birds, their preferences for hunting areas and their choice of spots to enjoy their successes.

I’ve been reading and following photographer David DuChemin and his approach to teaching a photographic vision.  He has a series called Vision is Better.  He talks about patience, waiting, the involvement in the around and being able to identify with the subject to really tell their story.  On one such video he travels to  British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest to photograph the Spirit Bears – a white variation of the black bear.  His video is shot from a short kayak trip, and I think its possible to really get both his excitement of the area, and his immersion in the moment, (if you will allow the pun).

Here’s the link if you’ve got 10 minutes.  https://craftandvision.com/blogs/all/vision-is-better-ep-20

 

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