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Monday, February 16, 2009

Bird Spotting

We went for a trip down the Great Ocean Road this weekend and we saw some super birds! This may not be that exciting for a number of people, I am aware that things that cause me much interest cause others minimal. But don't care! The photos here aren't even my own photos, I got them off the Internet because I never had the camera with me when I saw these birds, and I've now realised how small the images are. But anyway...
Well, as usual we stayed at Wye River camping ground and the resident Gang Gangs were making their lovely crunchy screeching sounds. I love these black cockatoos.

Then one of these lovelies landed in a tree beside our tent. A white faced heron. I don't think I've ever seen a heron in a tree before. My friend said it looked as weird as seeing a duck in a tree.

On our way home we could see a cloud of white on the road, as we got closer we saw that it was a huge flock of Long Billed Corellas all eating grain that had fallen from trucks leaving the animal grain warehouse. Poor silly things were eating alongside their fallen comrades who'd been squashed by passing vehicles. 

But the ultimate  spot this weekend was this bird. We were driving along the inland road back from the Twelve Apostles and suddenly this great white bird caught the corner of our eyes. We all saw it and knew, even in that flash, that it was something special. Jeremy did a three point turn and we drove back to the spot we saw it. There it was, a huge white bird of prey sitting on a dead bunny. When we got back to Melbourne I looked him up in my bird book and found out he was a white morph of a Grey Goshawk and that they were uncommon to rare, so we were very lucky to have seen it.

Now I have to go and tidy up my studio because it is a shocking mess and I've started working in the living room to avoid the mess, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a studio.

2 comments:

Kate Moore said...

Some good bird spotting. You'd love it here. My partner's a good one for spotting birds and points out some magnificent creatures. We did walk a birdwalking bushwalk where the leader did suddenly stop - in that classic twitcher way - and start whistling. I did feel like I was in some kinda weird Monty Python sketch and the look of "what the" on my face (have trouble hiding what I'm thinking) shut him up pretty quick smart. He was calling the Golden Whistler, and we did see quite a few. And a petrel. That was special. A mating pair. And a Womba (sp?) pigeon. That was just weird. All I could think was lunch. Apparently the same as the early settlers thought. The dumb thing just sits on the branch waiting for you to pluck it off.

hens teeth said...

Hello ~ I have just found you and your blog is wonderful. Bit of a bird luvver myself and I do love to draw them...it's the shape! I'm adding you to my blog list, hope that's ok.....