February 17 - Cleanliness

Cleanliness is for the birds! We have several bird baths in our yard but most are hidden under trees where the little finches and wrens feel safe. This one is a bit easier to photograph and was full of noisy mynas having their morning bath. Quite a social event!

February 3 - Busy

I just had to get back to the birds :)

A parent's work is never done - and this mother oriole has been busy feeding, feeding, feeding - I am amazed at the size of the grubs she can fit into those babies! She also cleans the nest, picking up baby droppings and flying away with them. The family have flown the nest now - great timing as it is raining buckets and I don't feel like standing in the rain holding the camera to my eye for half an hour just to get a couple of shots... but it was addictive watching the little ones grow. Missed the last ones of babies balancing on the edge of the nest and flapping around as I had manually focused and bumped it off a bit as I leaned against the tree - blurry babies :(

Photos show her feeding babies over about a week so you can see the little ones growing

January 26 - AUSTRALIA DAY

An Australia Day bonus post - some iconic Aussie animals and birds - an eastern grey kangaroo that stopped outside our back door for a look inside (scary, check out those muscles!) - some sulphur-crested cockatoos having a chat in the eucalyptus tree and an inquisitive emu.

January 25 - Blur

Photographing birds means timing is everything. One second you have the perfect composition, then you press the shutter and all that is left in the image is a tail ... or nothing! Sometimes the flight has unexpected outcomes - serendipitous images where the blur becomes the capture and all is good. This flock of galahs took off just as I snapped the picture. Outside their nest in a tree by the river, a pair of galahs are surprised by an eastern rosella - just passing through - and a brown cuckoo-dove took off in a flap from the roadway as we approached.

January 21 - best friend

Can't help but post some more bird photos for you today

At the coast on Sydney's northern beaches (Collaroy plateau) in winter I came across these gorgeous rainbow lorikeets. They are often quite friendly birds and will allow you to get close if you move slowly and don't startle them. This pair are obviously 'best friends' (though I do wonder what he said...) and allowed me a short series of photos before they flew away.

January 19 - Beauty

Beauty - finally we start on B!

As usual I'm going to be a little obscure because 'beauty' surely is in the eye of the beholder. Here are some faces that maybe only a parent could love :) baby thrush, wagtails and orioles ... and a brush turkey teen who is beautiful in unexpected ways...

The oriole baby is currently growing in its nest near the river behind our house, I think there are at least two hatchlings, but yesterday was the first time a little head popped up for me on my daily photo excursion. The parents are feeding the little ones what seems like massive quantities of insects and I am looking forward to watching them grow and taking some special photos.

January 16 - Athletic

Athletic - hmmm, could go with some waterskiiers, runners or gymnasts, but when I think of athleticism I think of the birds and animals here - so the images of the day are a huge wedge-tailed eagle balancing on the wire fence of our orchard so that he could snack on a fruit bat that had died there, a friendly brushtail possum who climbed around the vines near our campsite in the Border Ranges NP recently and some galahs who spent ages entertaining me with their gymnastic abilities until I just had to grab a camera and photograph them.

January 13 - Architecture

Architecture - so many things spring to mind - we have some fabulous old sheds here built with huge logs that still show the axe work and massive bolts that we also find rusting in the paddocks at times, remnants of even older buildings. Travels have left me with images of famous and not-so-famous buildings by creative (and not-so-creative) architects and of course in Australia we have the famous Sydney Opera House - moored in her harbourside surroundings, but a walk with my camera gives me some spectacular architecture - by the birds nesting outside our home.

These mud condominiums are built by tiny birds called Fairy Martins - each year they take over the gables of our home's second storey to make their constructions. At present the parents are raising their babies, returning regularly with insects. If you look closely, a baby is waiting at the entrance of one of the nests.

The second nest is hanging about a metre (3 feet) over the river behind our house. At present this mama olive backed oriole is sitting on her eggs, but soon she will also have hungry moths to feed. Her construction has survived a flash-flood several nights ago which brought water to its underside and just yesterday some gale-force winds whipped her around but didn't spill bird or eggs. This morning she is sitting comfortably in the warm sun, sometimes shouting at the magpie-larks who are getting too close for her comfort. I am staying back, letting the zoom on my canon do the work of getting close enough for this photo.

...and then there's our bower birds - not a nest, this bower is the male's architectural offering to his love, where he places blue objects to attract her so that he can dance and sing for her pleasure. I took this photo a couple of months ago as they are also now raising babies but I can't find their nest.

Last but not least - these wagtail babies are very snug in their nest, woven and rounded and protected by grapevines - but the parents let me know where to look by creating a fuss whenever I was close ;-) I waited until they had gone to search for food, set my camera for some close-ups, lifted the leaves and snapped a few images.