Wednesday, 13 April 2016

Wild Bird Wednesday 194 - Red-Tailed Tropicbird

Back to Lord Howe Island this week.  Red-Tailed Tropicbirds are truely remarkable - and I was glad to get a second chance to photograph them as I had had a few ideas about how to improve my shots from the first time I saw them!

These pictures were all taken on the cliffs at the north end of the island.

One day I'm going to run out of pictures from LHI - but it is not this day!





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Tuesday, 12 April 2016

The Middle of the Bay

During our week away at Curlewis, I took the kids out on a boat tour of Port Phillip Bay - where we swam with seals and dolphins!  It was a great day!  I got the best set of Dolphin pictures I have managed to take!

Port Phillip Bay has a population of about 100 - 150 rather special dolphins - they are a species of Bottlenose Dolphins called the Burrunan Dolphin.  This type of dolphin only occurs in the Bay and The Gippsland Lakes to the east of Melbourne.




The three images above show dolphins 'riding' the pressure wave at the front of our boat.





These four pictures show dolphins surfing the bow wave of a much larger boat in the main shipping channel.  In the last image you can see part of the skyline of the Melbourne CBD in the background.







These shots show two different pods of dolphins that came in to investigate the boat.  As you can see in one of the pictures, they are willing to swim right up to people in the water.  The last two shots also show a young dolphin with its (?) mother.


So long and thanks for the fish!

You can can find more shots from around the world at Our World Tuesday.

Monday, 11 April 2016

Preying Mantis

This rather wonderful creature was loitering by our front door earlier this week.  I think that Preying Mantis must be some of the most alien looking creatures that I see on a regular basis - and this 'other-worldness' was enhanced by the fact that the mantic turned its head around to watch me as I was taking these pictures.

Such encounters really do challenge the 'mindless automaton' vision of creatures other then human - this guys was very clearly checking me out!




You can find more macro shots at Macro Monday and I love Macro

Saturday, 9 April 2016

The Light on the Hill

I have taken some picture of this building before - but this weeks 52Frames challenge was 'Magic Hour' - so this seemed perfect.

Also, this has not been a good week for inspirational political leadership - tax evasion, the rhetoric of hate and divisive funding decisions do not make for much confidence.  So, maybe, we need some Light on the Hill.


Friday, 8 April 2016

Fast Changing Sunset

This is a sequence of images taken over the space of about two minutes, which show just how fast the sky can change at sunset - all images have been treated in the same way, and have had very little done to them except having the horizon levelled.





You can find more sky shots at Sky Watch Friday.  SM

Wednesday, 6 April 2016

Wild Bird Wednesday 193 - Black-Fronted Dotterel

It will come as no surprise to anybody even vaguely familiar with me, that I managed to squeeze in a few hours birding while I was down on the Bellarine Peninsula last week.  Not a huge number of hours - too many other things to do! - but enough to get some sights and pictures for the next few weeks at least.

One place I always like to visit when I am in that part of the world is Lake Lorne.  This is a naturally occurring lake of about 12 hectares.  It normally has decent populations of water birds on it, especially when other areas are dry.  One day, I will get to sit by the water all day and see what comes along.  This time I was looking for, and found, Black-Fronted Dotterels - a wader that is often seen at the lake, often feeding on the exposed muddy edges.  And this is what 3 of these birds were doing when I found them.  A bit of creeping along on my knees - I think I may buy knee pads one day! - got me close enough for some pictures - although if anybody has a spare 600mm lens knocking around I'd be happy to take it off your hands.

The Black-Fronted Dotterel is more technically known as Elseyornis melanops and is widespread through Australia.  The fast dashing feeding motion of these birds made them rather difficult to keep in focus - or even in the viewfinder if the truth be told!  It was only when they stopped moving that I could frame them - hence these pictures are all rather similar.




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