Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Early Morning Birds

There was a heavy shower of rain just before I went for a walk along the shoreline the other morning. All the trees and bushes were still very wet and it seemed that the birds had used the rain as an excuse to delay their early morning preening. This Mangrove Honeyeater was intent on getting every feather into place.High up on a tree a male Mistletoebird also completed his morning preen.Out on the saltmarsh flat this Willy Wagtail was catching insects that were hovering over a puddle of water in an old vehicle track.The Scarlet Honeyeaters were already busy in the tops of the trees.The only shorebirds were small dots far out on the sand flats.

14 comments:

  1. What a splendid morning! Wish I'd gone with you.

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  2. Hi Halcyon, thanks for commenting.

    Hi Snail, Some mornings are lucky and other mornings I go out there and don't see a thing!

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  3. I love the photos of the preening birds. It looks so much fun. :)

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  4. Thanks NF - the birds always seem to sit for a while when they are preening - although the resulting photos don't look at all like the careful poses in my bird books.

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  5. Such a nice variety of 'clean' Beauties :D
    Lovely shots!

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  6. Thanks Nicole, they are determined to look their best!!

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  7. Colourful walk. Cloud and drizzle persisting up this way too.

    BTW, swallowed pride and bought prepaid turbo modem. Hate to give in to Telstra (and it took 90 minutes on phone to activate modem)but inconvenient relying solely on the good services of Ingham Library.

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  8. I love photographs of birds engaged in bird like activities. These preening shots are great!

    I also like the Willy Wagtail in the reflection shot.

    You have captured these birds wonderfully Mick!

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  9. Hi Tony, and it has just started raining again - after threatening all day long. I hope your new modem works well for you.

    Thanks Larry for your comments. I used to wonder why I got so few photos of birds looking like the birds in the birding books - now I realize that real birds get into all sorts of interesting poses.

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  10. Nice series of your colourful species doing what they do ..naturally.

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  11. Beautiful birds and photos. The Scarlet Honeyeater is gorgeous! I love the colorful birds.

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  12. Thanks Eileen - I love the bright red color of that bird too.

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