Mullens in the Morning.

This post is for World Bird Wednesday.

It was low tide the other morning when I went for a walk along the foreshore to the Mullens roost. I wanted an easy walk without having to carry a lot of weight so left the big 150-500mm lens at home. Oh well, we all make mistakes of that kind sometimes! There were small birds everywhere in the bushes and trees and the 70-300mm lens was just not long enough!
Because there is still a lot of blossom on the Paperbark trees there were numbers of honeyeaters around. The easiest to see in that area are the Mangrove Honeyeaters. This one stopped just long enough for a quick photo even though the light was not in the right direction.
There were also lots of Brown Honeyeaters flying around.
There were a number of other small birds flitting in and out of the Mangroves that are all around the edge of the salt marsh. I waited for quite some time hoping that one would stop where I could actually see it rather than just fly into the bushes where I could only see leaves moving. This is the best I did - not a clear photo of the bird but unmistakeable with that pale ring around the eye - a Silvereye.
The biggest surprise of the morning were a group of small waders that flew up ahead of me then dropped down into the saltmarsh plants again. I couldn't tell what they were just from their flight pattern but even a distant photo was enough to ID Black-fronted Dotterels. These are another of the small shorebirds that are resident in Australia. They are not common in this area although I had been told that there were two there a couple of months ago. There were at least 4 in the group I saw. I took better photos of one I saw out in SW Queensland last year and have posted that photo again.
The most colorful photo of the morning was of a Scarlet Honeyeater that flew high up into a dead tree and then sat up there and let me get a couple of distant photos against the deep blue of the sky.

Birds around the Ponds

I went out to a local wetland pond area with friends on Sunday - ( I am still trying to catch up with some posts!). Its a very interesting area as we see different waders here from the ones we commonly see out around the bay. Neil over at Out and About in Cooloola has already posted about some of the birds we saw.
We also often see raptors here - it must be an easy place for them to pick up a meal - but what usually happens is that everything gets frightened and then there are birds swirling everywhere in the air around us. This is what happened this time. I am still not really comfortable with photos of birds in flight. It is OK if I have time to think about camera settings and get them ready - but not so good if I have to just try to point and shoot! So the photos I took are not great but certainly good enough for ID. btw - I have the camera but my friends have the expertise to ID the birds! (Thanks Kel and Neil!) So this is a Swamp Harrier - a juvenile we think. This was definitely the first time I have ever seen this bird.
I also got my first ever photos of a Forest Kingfisher but although the photo is clear it does not show the beautiful blue color of the back feathers.
The other frustrating thing about this site is that even though it is easy to see small birds out on the sides of the ponds with a scope it is impossible to get very close and so any photos are for ID only. This bird is one of a small group of Black-fronted Dotterel. Its a very distinctive little bird and oh how I would like nice clear and close photos!