purple swamphen

Balyang: 24/11/2015

December 1, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

I’m just going to use dates rather then come up with creative titles for my Balyang visits. I’m just there so darn much. Fortunately, I’ll probably only be visiting for another couple of weeks. I’ll still continue to go to mums and explore the Barwon, just not as the pace I’ve been currently doing.

This current birding project has actually been incredibly exhausting!

Anyway, I was photographing these cockatoos below because I thought the increased number of birds meant I had a better chance of getting a poop shot. I didn’t notice until later that one of them had fruit in its mouth!

I got these generic house sparrow shots while waiting for it to do something else. I’ve learned from experience that they don’t give any warning beforehand! It is an interesting challenge, trying to get lovely photos of them.

There was a lot of young people feeding bread to the birds there, which was annoying. I’m too shy to say anything at this point.

This swamphen saw a silver gull land with a large piece of bread and decided that it wanted some! 🙂 It kinda looks like a dinosaur here.

These long billed corellas were grooming each other and then had a nap. Not from a great angle, but that was because I was lying down on the ground photographing lorikeets.

I nearly got shat on several times while trying to get photos of lorikeets doing the same thing. I had a couple of near misses when trying to get the shots.

I spent ages just watching about 10 of them fly around above me. I got to get a very close look at the colours of their tail. I probably shouldn’t dismiss them as a photographic subject so quickly.

Finally, the red wattlebirds are still working hard feeding their chicks. They have been a consistent background call for the past 6 weeks or so.

As mentioned, it has been an exhausting month. At least 10k+ photos taken at this one location, all of which is painstakingly documented. I definitely wont be doing it again next year. However I’ve learned so much. I’ve got so many questions to seek answers for, which I’ll be doing when things slow down. I can start working on guides for certain birdwatching locations.

It has also taught me so much about managing anxiety and birding with patience. I’ll definitely be writing more about that late.

Spotted Pardalotes at Balyang

July 23, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Last Sunday, Sethy and I went to Balyang after our visit to Eastern Beach. The main goal of the trip was to see if there was enough interesting behaviour to justify Glenn travelling an hour to photograph birds. I quickly learned that no, there wasn’t. The nesting behaviour I saw last time was a fluke and we would be better off going to an environment with a larger concentration of birds. Seth and I still had fun, though

This is what remains from the heron nest from last year. I do want to return and see if a heron nests here this season.

Swamphen.

Cute darter flying away. The following images are all of pardalotes. Sethy found these in a tree, based on the last visit. Last time, I took a photo of a little bird in a tree and dismissed it as a thornbill. It was dark, rainy and I didn’t really care. Later, I looked at the photos and lightened the image. Sethy and I worked out that we had actually seen a spotted pardalote, which was a lifer for him. The main difference, for us, was the tail was shorter. He was so stoked. It really made me think about how many birds I had dismissed in the past that may had been something else. I didn’t really care about them before but these guys changed me mind. They were quite low down and easy to see. They let us get really close views from all angles. I think they were eating the leaves of something on the leaves. Possibly lerps?

Cute fungi

Spider underneath a possum guard.

I don’t know how often pardalotes are at Balyang. It could be seasonal. Or, they could be in the lower branches because it’s nearly nesting time. It’s certainly something to research. I’ve never noticed them before because they aren’t as visible as some of the other birds.

All the ducks there at the moment are boring. Oh! And there was wedding photography being done here during our visit. There may have been a dog wearing the top half of a tuxedo.

Nesting Behavior at Balyang

July 23, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

This trip took place on 6 july

I’m a little bit late in writing this post. It has been a busy couple of weeks and I still don’t have the internet connected here yet! I’m hijacking the internet connection via Glenns phone at the moment, so all the posts from today will be a tad rushed.

I had spent the weekend at mums. I’d promised Sethy and adventure but the weather had been bad, plus I wanted to get back to the house in time to look for owls with Carolyn. I told Sethy we’d go down there on the Monday. It turned out, we got there just in time for some decent rain. It was still a blast though.

You see, we observed some nesting behaviour from the crows and the cockatoos. The cockatoos were flying from hollow to hollow. They were biting off bits of back around the hollow and then scooping up and chucking out the shavings. Two rainbow lorikeets ended up scaring them away from here so I don’t know if they will use this hollow.

The other behaviour was the crows collecting twigs for their nest. Two of them were doing it. They would break sticks off trees and find ones on the ground. Break them up into smaller pieces to make the nest. I don’t know if they ended up using any stuff from the herons nest from last year.

Below are the relevant photos, as well as pictures of a pretty swamphen. Sorry for the lack of explanation, I will be doing more research about nests.

Birds at Werribee Zoo

December 8, 2014 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Today, Glenn and I went to Werribee Zoo. I’d gone there last year for my birthday and thought Glenn would get a buzz out of it. Yes, I did have the ulterior motive of birding. The primary goal though was to let Glenn have fun with the telephoto lens.

It was a bit hit and miss. A couple of animals weren’t on display. There were primary school students there – screaming and crying – so we didn’t stay in some sections as long was we liked. Most of the animals were just sleeping, which doesn’t make for interesting photographs. I felt like I’d made a mistake recommending that we go here.

Fortunately, the safari experience made up for it. So many birds of prey!

Birds of prey

Black kite. Mama knows how to ID those.

The above two are whistling kites. I had to consult my guide as I’m unable to ID these just by looking yet. I like how I got a shot of the top of the wings too. I have noticed that the western suburbs have a lot of kites. It is probably a bias, as I haven’t explored it in depth. I’m basing it on 3 visits to Serendip, todays trip and last week when I saw two black shouldered kites.

I got a glimpse of this fella, or lady, while we were on the tour bus. I only got a glimpse of it and instinctively snapped two shots just in case. The bus was very bumpy and the lady was going quicker at that point. I tentatively ID’ed it as a nankeen kestral, with a slight possibility of being a light coloured brown falcon. This was because my gut said kestral when I first saw it and falcons… have no idea about those yet.

As usual, I posted it on a bird identification FB group. I’m so amazed at how people can tell what a bird is with such little data. It apparently holds itself more like a falcon, and Nankeen kestrals aren’t that common in the area. The ‘chest was too large and the body proportion wrong.’

I love how people know so much. I fucking love this hobby. I don’t know how people are able to hold all this information in their heads. I probably wont add this to my list yet but still. Learned a lot. Especially at a time when my priority was making sure Glenn got the awesome photos.

Waterbirds

I had checked out a map online, and asked on Facebook, and knew to concentrate on the areas that had a lot of water. The photos we got were of birds that may be considered generic but I don’t care. I love baby and juvenile birds.

Dusky moorhen plus chicks. It looked like one of the birds were still on chicks. The photos aren’t the best as I took them using the Nikon. I wish I could have gotten some close ups of the chicks. They looked very young, and it looked like several birds were working together to feed them.

Young swamphen. I was confused as to what it was, thinking it might have been a crake. Then I saw the adult. This was in a wetland area of the Aussie animal section. There was a bunch of annoying teens screaming and swearing as they walked through the section that made birding difficult.

The buff banded rail. Got several long looks at this little guy and had a lot of opportunities to get good photos. Glenn got these, because he knew that I really wanted them. I could have spent most of the day photographing it.

Others

New Holland Honeyeater. We photographed this guy after walking around for half an hour. Glenn made a comment about how it was just like what we do at home – photographing common birds. The birds here were more used to humans and allowed for really great shots. This is blurrier then I would have liked but I was letting Glenn use the Canon.

Blackbird. Loved the contrast with the beak

Ducklings. Because they’re ducklings.

There was a section of the wetlands where there was a grey fantail and a silvereye having a bath in a stream of water. None of the photos really turned out but I loved watching it. I also saw a red browed finch in the area. Common… but I want to see how many of the alleged 160 species in the area I can find.

It was recommended that I look out for black chinned honeyeaters and purple crowned lorikeets. I had no luck but didn’t get a chance to properly explore. I did see two species of ibis and pelicans flying over.

I would like to return again so I can birdwatch properly. African animals in an artificial settings don’t really intrigue me. I did want to see the serval cats but that presentation was cancelled.

Also wanted to go to Truganina afterwards but someone had chewed up the memory cards. Fair enough, I’ll be doing so much birding over the next week to make up for it!

Balyang: 15 Sept

September 24, 2014 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Last week, Glenn and I went to Balyang. I had discovered the baby herons the day before and wanted to show him where to find them. I was leaving for my mothers that afternoon so we had to have a quick look.

Glenn doesn’t know how to have a quick look. I had to rush to be able to get to my mums in time. He got some awesome photos of a swamphen.

There was a number of wood ducks there, they have been there for a week. There are meant to be baby wood ducks further up the river! Glenn got some cool photos of one preening

We’ve also been enjoying the cockatoos there lately. I don’t think there are any more then usual. They probably aren’t even being more cheeky. I just think we are now there a lot more to observe such behaviour due to the better weather.