I had trouble getting perfect pictures of the occasional male Golden Whistler popping by our camp. Because these birds usually kept moving while foraging, I often took the shot too early – before the camera could auto focus.

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This next bird is an immature Golden Whistler. You can see spots of yellow on the body, and black on the throat band. This one was more accommodating.

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I never see these birds at home. And I can’t tell you what they sound like as I’m too deaf to hear them. Next trip I’m going to wear my cheap Chinese imported hearing aids as I’m really missing bird song.

I suppose I could have doctored this final photo with a bit of light enhancement on its eye, but that would be cheating! What you see on my blog is what I get – apart from sharpening and cropping and reducing pixels.

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Thanks for looking.

🙂

Birds

Golden Whistler

I’m still going through my travel photos from our 4-day stay last month at Rocklands Reservoir, near Balmoral, Victoria (Australia). While we didn’t get rain, we did have a couple of frosty mornings, usually with fog lingering until the sun cleared the trees.

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Fog isn’t very conducive to bird photography, but I couldn’t resist taking some pictures of this little fellow perched on top of our camping stove lid.

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It got a few tiny scraps as I hadn’t yet cleaned up the stove from the previous night. I love this next photo of the foggy gum trees. It reminds me of Hans Heysen, who became a household name here for his watercolours – so much so that he became Sir Hans Heysen O.B.E. (1884 – 1968).

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Thanks for looking.

🙂

Birds, Other Stuff, Travels

Winter Camping: frost ‘n fog

According to the local water authority for Rocklands Reservoir, near Balmoral in Victoria, Rocklands was a mere 28% of capacity when we visited last month. This first photo was taken from the hill between the caravan park and the water. No wonder we only took the kayaks down the once.

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