World Bird Wednesday - Rainforest Adventure

While visiting in Melbourne I spotted a couple of ducks in the

wetlands and thought 'yea, right, same old, same old . . .'

but to my surprise, when uploaded and looked up, they turned

out to be pair of Chestnut Teals, Anas castanca, a lifer for me!

We also headed up into the Great Dividing Range and it's

temperate rainforest, a magnetic attraction for us who hiked

these mountains extensively in our salad days.

Stopped at the Mt.Dom Dom saddle recreation area where himself

wanted to climb to the top as any good mountain goat would do

and yours truly, camera in hand, had other intentions.

First (unavoidable) catch, the ubiquitous magpie at my feet as

soon as I opened the hatch to get a mandarin.

Hearing lots of bird sounds in the Acacia re-growth scrub,

I headed to the thicket but the dense growth totally foiled me.

I tried the steep descent towards the creek where a lot of tweeting,

twittering and chirping was going on . . occasionally I spotted

a fleeting glimpse of tiny feathered things flitting across my path

but nothing at all that I could even try pointing my shooter at.

Pretty exhausted, I shlepped my trusty hand extension up the

hill again. Huffing and puffing like a steam engine I wormed

my way back up . . .

and just when I had accepted my empty handed fate, this

little Silvereye moved enough so I could see it and landed

close enough so I could land it too.

Where there is one, company soon appears. I have no idea

what this little one is but I was grateful for anything barely

within the range of my 135mm lens.

Pretty indistinct, yet definitely a bird not a kangaroo.

The flash of a wing caught by pure chance as it fluttered to

another twig.

Thank the Lord fasting for the photoshop cropping device,

Can you pick the little bird in this?? I could definitely not see

a bird that sat still and when it moved, I often could not find

it in my sights. Pretty useless being addicted to stalking when

you are blind as a bat and can't carry a decent sized lens with

you. Yet still, like a blind chicken, you sometimes find a barley

corn.

Hiding behind a branch and heavily cropped, my lucky

last shot before I stopped to give my eyes a rest.

Hope you all had fun birding this week and show us the results

by adding your posts to World Bird Wednesday!