4.15am! I am alarmed from my sleep. My mind works slowly at that hour of the morning and it takes me a few minutes to remember that I had set that dastardly alarm myself!
This morning I am going to drive out to one of the springs which ring Punmu and take some photographs of the birds at dawn. Yesterday I had heard that there is a blue wren out near the spring named “Ilyarri”. Ok, this is self inflicted so I may as well get up and turn the alarm off. I am very cruel to myself as I always put the alarm clock well away from the bed.
Off I go into the brightening day.
The 4×4 very nearly gets bogged in the sand around the spring so I put it into four wheel drive and find the best spot I can to view the spring. I have no intentions of leaving the cab as there are bound to be – umm – wrigglies around! The spring is in quite a mess as the camels have been drinking here. And stomping here!
The first bonus for the day is a dingo which runs past me. I try to set up for a shot and as he pauses I click. The pause was very short and by the time I was ready to shoot again, he was gone. Dingoes are extremely shy and although I have seen a number of them on the road, they are always gone by the time I pick up my camera. This is the first one I have successfully captured. I feel quite good. Until I look at the play-back!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
I look again at the spring and in the blackness of the mud and the dark contrasts of a dawn I was almost looking into I saw some small birds wandering around the water. I automatically think I have found my elusive quail. The quail I have been looking for over the past four years. Then I notice the tail. Hmm. A prominent, stubby tail with a very clear white daub. This is not a quail. I check my field guide and decide it must be an Australian Spotted Crake. The contrasty conditions are not suitable for snapshots but this bird is shy and scuttles for cover at the slightest sound. I take around thirty shots over a one hour period and this was the best I could come up with.
Then the galahs arrived. Embarrassingly noisy, argumentative and showy, these birds took over the spring. Even the zebra finches went and hid, possibly trying to avoid being feathered with the same brush. It is, however, a colourful brush.
Apart from all their other faults, Galahs are messy eaters and drinkers!
After wheeling around and making lots of noise they eventually departed. I looked at where they had been and finally saw my quail close up! Two of them, proving just how effective their camouflage can be. So here they are. Two Little Button Quail.
There was to be no blue wren this morning, yet it was a worthwhile expedition as I was able to snap two birds which have previously eluded me. Oh yes, and an indelicate dingo!
Filed under: Digital Photography, Introspective, My Photography, Pictorial, humour, lifestyle, reflective writings | Tagged: Digital Photography, My Photography
That cheeky dingo made me laugh. Isn’t it amazing how well camouflaged the Australian Spotted Crake is? I love galahs so much, there are packs of them in the park near my house but they are not as pink as the ones you photographed. The pink on the galahs here is only on their tummies. I’ve also seen a bird which I think is a galah but it is grey, like a grey parrot. Is that a galah?!
The pink and grey galahs are coloured more intensely the further you go into the desert. The colour change is very noticeable when I travel from Perth to Punmu and in two days the pinks are so much pinker. Your grey cockatoo sounds like a “Gang-Gang Cockatoo”. The males have a pink or red head while the females are all grey. They have a whispy top-knot. From my reference bird book, “Uses dense, tall wet forests of mountains and gullies and alpine woodland… Common in prime habitat of S NSW and NE Vic, but becoming rare where habitat is degraded.” Does this sound like the bird you have seen?
That description does seem similar to the birds I’ve seen in the park, but the habitat here is quite different to their usual habitat. The environment has some sparse woodland and couldn’t be described as wet or mountainous. Maybe they’ve flown in from the Blue Mountains?
The grey colour limits the available candidates. Most other cockatoos are black. The Gang-Gang makes that sort of noise. It could be that their original range is beginninhg to be degraded or possibly the trees in your area are attractive to them. If it is a smaller bird than the galah, then it could be a cockatiel. They are much finer featured than the true cockatoos.
I love trying to photography birds. It is such a challenge and so often their camouflage makes the picture unsuccessful. I have a Cooper’s hawk who hunts my yard for the little finches and sparrows that frequent it. Sometimes he flies in and sits on top of the bar that my bird feeders hang from, and peers around as if to say, “What happened to all the game?” And I hear the finches laughing at him from the pine tree, a Kiplingesque “One Two Three, and Where’s your breakfast?”
One day I took a picture of him sitting there. I have it stuck in the back of my Field guide, but you really have to look closely to see him,he blends in with the background way too well.
I loved the indelicate dingo! He looks almost embarassed to be caught in such a necessary position.
You know, now I’m starting to think these galahs are actually white but have been tinged grey by pollution. They are not a true grey, more a grubby seagull grey. That’s a bit depressing…
HMH (if I may use a contraction) I began photographing birds in a serious way a couple of years ago. There is a lot of satisfaction in getting a good shot. You may like to visit my “Bird Site” (which I must bring up-to-date) http://members.westnet.com.au/archive/
Helen, I’ll post a couple of pictures of the “Little Corella” in a regular post. I think this may be what you are seeing