Early Morning Light

I am lucky to have friends who share with me the beautiful places they find. (Thanks Sarah!) They had found a series of small streams and waterholes that looked especially beautiful in the early morning light so the other day I set off to have a look as well. It was only just after sunrise when we set off and everything was damp with a heavy dew. (click on images to enlarge them)We started off through an area of tall trees but very soon came to more typical wallum country. Wikipedia describes wallum as "an Australian ecosystem of coastal south-east Queensland, extending into north-eastern New South Wales. It is characterised by floristically-rich shrubland and heathland on deep, nutrient-poor acidic sandy soils and regular wildfire. Seasonal changes in the water-table due to rainfall may create swamps. The name is derived from the Kabi word for the Wallum Banksia (Banksia aemula)."
I could hear birds calling from all the taller trees and shrubs but as the track mostly went through more open country I saw very few close enough to photograph. I could hear wrens in lots of places and eventually some Red-backed Fairy-Wrens came close enough to the track for me to get photos. The female came in close and posed very nicely. The male stayed back in behind the branches and flew off quickly. Later on a couple of Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos flew high overhead giving their usual noisy cries.Because of all the rain we have recently had there was water lying everywhere. This made crossing even small streams quite interesting! In some places ankle deep water was extremely close to holes more than a meter deep and it was very easy to put a foot in the wrong place! In the early morning light even the smaller waterholes reflected back the blue sky and the bushes hanging over them.After about a kilometer and a half we reached a bigger stream with larger pools of water. The reflections here were definitely worth walking in to see.There were numbers of wildflowers in bloom already. I hope to go back in another couple of weeks to see what else is in flower as this is still very early in the flowering season. Even when we were walking out the dew was still heavy on the flowers. These two little beauties caught my attention. I have no idea of the name of the plant but the dew on each tiny flower made them look like little strings of glittering jewels. I have just been told that these are 'sundews' - a carnivorous plant - and they have sticky droplets on the end to catch insects! For more bird photos visit the Bird Photography Weekly.