Wild Bird Wednesday 195 - Welcome Swallow

When we got back from the trip out into the Bay, H pointed out this Welcome Swallow sitting on the back of a seat in another tour boat.  I love the way this bird seems to be looking around, taking things in.

The Welcome Swallow is the 'normal' swallow in my part of the world, and its a different species to the Barn Swallow (which I just called a Swallow) that I used to see in the UK.  The Welcome Swallow is Hirundo neoxena while the Barn Swallow is H. rustic.

These birds do migrate north from Tasmania and SE Australia in the winter, but a few hand around all year.

In these pictures you can see that these swallows do not have the dark chest/ breast band of the Barn Swallow.

Now its your turn - click the blue button and off you go!

An InLinkz Link-up

I suspect it may be autumn

A quick phone shot from my after work walk - I suspect it may be autumn!

Compost in the making!

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

Food for Thought

Those of you misfortunate enough to have a real time conversation with me will have notice that I like a pun or two - or as my kids say "Pun City!!".

This weeks 52Frames theme was food - so when I thought about it, I came up with the idea of Food for Thought.  And this is the picture that I made.

Silly as it may be, I rather like this!  SM

A hawk sky, with no hawks!

I have mentioned on a number of occasions that I don't seem to get pictures of birds of prey - so here are two for the price of one!

The lower of the two birds is a Little Eagle and the upper one a Whistling Kite.  I used a wonderful Australia Bird ID group on FB to check these identifications - I can recommend this group highly!

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

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!

Now its your turn - click the blue button and off you go!

An InLinkz Link-up

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.