A week on the wild side

posted in: Life and things, Photography | 4

It’s pretty well known I’m keen on birds. We don’t have any domestic pets, so our yard is a safe haven for many bird species. They’re part of daily life, adding colour and movement to the environment. But sometimes accidents happen, and sometimes very special things happen. This week was packed full of unusual events.

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Blue-faced honey eater about to land

One of the blue faced honey eaters decided to fly into the garage through the people door, and found itself stuck, with nowhere to go. So it flew toward the garden. But there’s a window in the way. It panicked, fluttering around on the glass. Fortunately, I noticed. The bird wasn’t interested in being shooed toward the door (which it couldn’t see), so I caught it in my hands. It squawked a bit, but latched onto my finger as it would a perch and sat quite calmly as I carried it out to the garden. It didn’t say thank you or anything, but it was quite remarkable that the bird allowed me to catch it. I felt privileged.

Young magpie begging
Young magpie begging

A day or two later, on my evening prowl around the yard, I noticed commotion from the rather decrepit shade house. The shade cloth has split at the top, so birds can get in. They can also get out, of course, but accidents happen. The culprit turned out to be a junior magpie. Once again, the bird thought it should be able to get out at the end of the shade house. The shade cloth is only thirty percent, so while not transparent, you can see through it. I went into the shade house, leaving the door open. But the magpie was in no mood to be rescued. I tried to coax it – the birds are territorial, so junior knew me – but I had to settle for herding it until it could see the open door at the other end of the shade house. It was off, and outta there. Job done. Yay me.

Rainbow Lorikeet
Rainbow Lorikeet

And then a day or two later I was standing outside the back door watching the lorikeets flutter around the bird table. They’re used to me being there with the camera against my face. It’s a great place to try and catch a good photo of them in flight. (Thank goodness for digital cameras – if we were still using film I would have given up. I might get a two percent return rate. If I’m lucky.) Anyway, here I am with the 70-300mm zoom lens pointed at the birds. Fully zoomed, it’s quite long. A bird flew towards me. I expected it to disappear and fly up to the roof. To my amazement. the lorikeet landed ON the lens, and just sat, looking at me. A moment later its mate joined it. I was gobsmacked. On reflection, I think they were just curious. Twice a lorikeet has come inside when the back door was open. It landed on the back of a chair, had a look around, then flew out again.

I love my avian mates. Except the crows. I would probably like them, too, if they didn’t make such a row at the crack of dawn.

Today is election day here in Australia. I’m not sure I’m thrilled about the two major parties, but with our preferential voting system, voting for a minor party often means you end up voting for a major, anyway. Really, I think our Western society model is breaking down and needs to be replaced. We seem to have a choice between supporting business, or letting the trade unions rule the roost. Anyway, I’ve done my hard-won democratic duty. We’ll see tomorrow.

4 Responses

    • Greta

      Thanks. Not necessarily brilliant at hi-res. But they don’t have to be 🙂

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