Wild Bird Wednesday 166 - Satin Bowerbirds

The house I stayed in last week at Apollo Bay had a wonderful garden, full of hidden places, tall flowering plants and Satin Bowerbirds.  The hidden places and plants were pretty much what I had expected, the Bowerbirds were a wonderful surprise.

However, the Bowerbirds were also frustratingly shy - especially the males.

The Satin Bowerbird - Ptilonorhynchus violaceus - is a rather chunky, thick-set bird about about 30 long.  The male is a wonderful glossy blue-black and the females (and juveniles) are an attractive grey-green with delicate scaly markings.  Both sexes have rather startlingly blue eyes.

I think there was a lot of pre-breeding feeding going on in the garden, and I was unable to find any bowers.  The species has a real fondness for blue objects and the bower, which is built to impress the female, often contains dozens of blue objects.  These must have been in short supply in the past,  but today the bowers are often full of pen tops, milk carton lids and other bits of human rubbish.

I have included a few 'atmosphere' shots of the males, hidden in bushes and basically always just out of sight.  For a very brief period of time one female was willing to pose on a branch for me.

Next time, I'll paint myself blue and see if the birds come over to check me out!

Regular visitors here will not be surprised that I rather like this last image - as it sums up the frustration I had when I was trying to get some picture of the male bird - always a little bit hidden.

Now it's your turn to click the blue button and join in with WBW.  SM

An InLinkz Link-up

On the beach

I spent most of last week at Apollo Bay, a small coastal town about 3 hours west of Melbourne.  The town itself sits on the Great Ocean Road, a justifiably famous scenic coastal road.  In reality, all of the family needed some down time and we spent a lot of the week in wonderfully low key activities, like wandering rather aimlessly along beaches and going to look at waterfalls - all in all it was just what the doctor ordered.

One of our beach 'routines' is the building of rock towers, with the aim of getting as many balanced on top of each other as possible.  I really like doing this with the kids as there are a vast amount of things going on inside your head as you try to get the most stones in one tower.

I also can't help but think of some of the sculptures done by Andy Goldsworthy when I make these towers - stones telling stories, bringing (brief) order to otherwise disordered things and the transience of human construction.  And I also just plain enjoy building them!

I think that there are 23 stones in this tower - I tried for 25 but it collapsed!

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

Wild Bird Wednesday 165 - Galah

Just to carry on with the bright colours for WBW, this week I have some shots of Galahs.  Here is my attempt to explain how that word sounds!  The 'Ga' at the start makes the same sound as the 'G' at the start of 'gull' and 'lah' is the same as in do, rae, me! Which get you to G-lah!

Anyway, enough of such things.  The Galah is found over almost all of Australia, with it only being absent from a small part of Tasmania.  Its formal name Eolophus roseicapillus references its 'rosy haired' crest, which makes it somewhat more appropriate than last week bird where the name overlooks the fact that the bird is bright red!

The combination of greys and pinks on this bird is, to say the least, attractive.  These birds seem to be feeding on the roots or possible new germinated grass seeds.

Although these pictures were taken at (wait for it!) Wilsons Promontory National Park, these birds were a lot less acclimated to people than the Rosellas from last week.  In fact, they were a little bit flighty and it took a good while to get close to them.  This set of pictures resulted in muddy knees, although I am unsure why I feel the need to tell you this!

Once more it comes to the part of the post where I invite you to click on the blue button and join in with WBW - so, over to you!  SM

An InLinkz Link-up

Wilson's Animals

You may be pleased to know that I am just about out of images from my recent trip to Wilson's Prom.  - although there will be some Prom Birds along later! While the scenery is great, its also a place where you can have some seriously good views of classic Australia wildlife.

Tidal River, which is the 'hub' of the Park has a large population of resident wombats, and in the winter its not that hard to find one trundling about.  Common Wombats are the world largest hole dwelling herbivore, which is not the kind of fact you find on most blogs!

Wombats are rather chunky animals - with large animals being over a meter long and weighing in excess of 30 kg!  (which is over 3 feet long and 60 pounds in old money!)

These are picture of a Swamp Wallaby - he (or she) seemed pretty relaxed about me taking her photograph in the winter sunshine.  In the end he just sat down and disappeared from view.

You can find more shots from around the world (but probably not too many more marsupials) at Our World Tuesday.  SM

A Prom Sky

My internet connection is back in the land of the living - all I need now is to spend a few hours in deep meditation to offset the stress it caused!

Part of the solution will be to look at peaceful images;  here are two as a place to start!

These two images show the hills at the south end of Norman Bay, taken from Tidal Overlook.   They are just catching the last light of the day.

You can find more skies here at Sky Watch Friday.  SM

A Thursday Night Problem

My internet connection has just collapsed in a rather spectacular fashion - I may be off line for a while.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

SM